


guard you in all your ways

by dothraki_shieldmaiden



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts, Minor Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, Multi, References to Major Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-01-21 07:09:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21295538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dothraki_shieldmaiden/pseuds/dothraki_shieldmaiden
Summary: Dean Winchester's life has always been blessed.He lives the perfect life in Lawrence, Kansas, with his parents, brother, and friends. No injury or illness seems to touch him. And for thirty years, he never wonders why.At thirty, he meets the being responsible for his blessed life, and it all starts to unravel from there.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 131
Kudos: 343
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	1. a blessed life

_For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.” --Psalm, 91:11_

\---

Dean Winchester has always been blessed. 

From the house fire that started in Sam’s bedroom that _should_ have killed his brother and his mother, from the tornado that _should_ have ripped the house from its foundations, from the time that the woman with black eyes snatched at his arm and tried to pull him away from his mother at the store. 

They hadn’t believed him, about the eyes, no matter how much he insisted. He’d thought that his mother believed him--when he said that the woman who tugged him away had black eyes, she’d drawn back, her face white and the lines around her mouth pale with tension. For the briefest of moments, she’d been a stranger, one that Dean would have been afraid of. Then, she’d softened into his mother once again. 

He’d never told about the second part of the story. When the police and his mother and father asked about how he got free, he told them that he kicked the woman until she was forced to let go of his arm and ran to find the nearest adult. 

If they didn’t believe him that the woman had black eyes, then they certainly wouldn’t believe that a man dressed in a trenchcoat came and put his hand on the woman’s arm. They wouldn’t believe that his eyes glowed white, like the hottest part of a fire, or that the woman’s skin smoked where he touched her. 

They wouldn’t believe that Dean wasn’t afraid in that moment. He hadn’t understood it himself, but something jumped in his stomach, like waking up and realizing that it was Christmas, like looking everywhere for his favorite shirt and then realizing _Oh, there you are_. 

The woman hissed when the man touched her and Dean had jumped away from her painful fingers, from her body that smelled like rotten eggs. He moved instead to the man who smelled like fresh rain and the ocean. 

“Hear me and take this message back to your brethren,” the man said. He sounded like Dad whenever he wanted to make sure that Dean and Sam understood him, except worse. “You will not harm Dean and Sam Winchester.” 

The woman sneered and Dean’s hand went out to grasp the tails of the man’s coat. Her face was a combination of his worst nightmares--ghosts, and zombies, and werewolves, and the other, nameless ones--Mom and Dad getting hurt, Sam getting hurt, being left abandoned and alone with no one to care for him-- “You might be able to protect them from us, but what about from your own family?”

Warmth filled the air. It reminded Dean of the snapping of electricity, like watching his father weld two pieces of metal together. It had the same, acrid bite. 

“Flee now,” the man said, his voice like a thunderstorm, “or I will lay you to waste.” 

“You wouldn’t dare,” the woman sneered, but there was doubt in her voice. 

“Wouldn’t I?” the man asked. “I have already shifted the cosmos. What’s one demon?” 

He raised his hand, and power glowed from his fingertips. Dean watched, amazed, at the white light lancing forward, wincing at the high-pitched squeal vibrating through his head. The woman looked at his fingers, before she threw back her head. 

Dean pressed close against the man’s leg as a cloud of thick, black smoke erupted from her mouth. He hid his face in the coat and breathed in the scent of fresh rain, imagining that he was on a beach with Mom, Dad, and Sam, wishing that he was buried in his mother’s embrace--anywhere but here. 

He didn’t realize that he was crying until he felt gentle fingertips at his cheeks. “It’s fine,” the man said, a little awkwardly. He wiped a thumb underneath Dean’s eye and it came back damp. “She’s gone now. She’s not going to hurt you. No one is.” 

Dean sucked in a shaky breath. The man’s eyes were blue, like the blue of midnight and starry skies, but also like the blue of summer and clear sunshine. He looked sad, but sad in a way that could be changed. Like he hadn’t always been sad, like maybe he just forgot how to be happy. 

“What’s your name?” Dean asked, forgetting to be scared. 

The man’s eyes clouded. Dean knew that expression from seeing it on his mom’s face--it was the one that adults wore when they were upset but trying not to be. 

“My name isn’t important,” the man said. “What’s more important is that you get back to your mother.” 

“What are you going to do?” It seemed important, in that moment, to ask. 

The man smiled at him, slowly, like he had to remember how. 

“You’re very kind,” he said, “to worry. I’ll be fine.” 

Dean was old enough to know a goodbye when he heard one. “Will I ever see you again?”

Dean might have been a child, but he wasn’t stupid. He saw the moment when the man considered lying. He saw the moment when the man decided on the truth. “I don’t know.” The man’s hand twitched, like he wanted to touch Dean, but he was holding himself back. “But if you need me, then I’ll be there.” 

“How? I don’t know how to call you.” 

Dean never knew that sadness could smile. “You won’t have to.” 

The man pointed to a kindly looking older woman, sitting by herself. He gave Dean instructions to go talk to her. He told Dean that the woman would help him reach his mother again. When Dean turned back to thank the man, he vanished.

\---

Dean grows up. He remains blessed. 

The night that he was driving himself and Robin home from the game and the Impala hit a patch of black ice. They should have skidded off the road and ended up wrapped around the tree, but the tires only miss for a second before something shoves them back onto the road. Dean slammed on the brakes and sat in the middle of the road, panting his terror in soft puffs of white breath. Beside him, Robin clutched at his elbow. 

“What was that?” she asked, her voice shrill. 

“I don’t, I don’t know.” Dean didn’t even try to be a macho guy in that moment. “I don’t, Jesus, i don’t know.”

It was like a hand just reached out and shoved the car back onto the road. 

For the first time in a long time, Dean thinks of the man with the coat and the sad blue eyes.

\---

During the summer break between his sophomore and junior year at college, Dean takes a construction job. The work is hard, but the pay is reasonable, and he gets to spend all day outside working and joking alongside Benny and Victor. He takes his shirt off, hoping to tan, but instead gets a vivid red burn and about a thousand more freckles in compensation for his troubles. 

One day, while working on the roof of a building, Dean takes a wrong step. He feels the horrific lurch of weightlessness, the knowledge that he's about to crash two stories to the ground with nothing to break his fall but boards and nails. _Shit_, he thinks uselessly. 

Later, he'll tell Benny and Victor that he managed to grab onto an exposed beam and break his fall. That's the reason that he's not talking to them with several broken bones, or worse. They'll go to the bar, drink a beer, and laugh too loudly as they talk about how lucky he is. "Must be that guardian angel of yours," Victor will say, not realizing that, in the moment of his fall, Dean heard the unmistakable sound of feathers rustling around him, felt them brush his face as they wrapped around him and deposited, gently as a thought, onto the ground. 

\---

Dean's life is blessed. 

He suffers the regular aches and pains--his senior year in college he gets the flu so badly that he misses a week of classes and has to skip Spring Break to make up all of his work--but he's good. He graduates and waffles, before joining his father at his autoshop. They butt heads more often than not, but Dean catches the lingering looks of pride that his father gives him when he thinks that Dean isn't aware. After a few years, John lets Dean start tampering in the restoration aspect of the work and starts making soft noises about retiring. 

Sam graduates and goes to Stanford. While he's there, he meets a girl named Jessica, who's tall and blonde, who sings off-key, and who's on the short list of people that Dean's met in this world who are smarter than his brother. She also likes to draw dicks over Sam's nipples when he falls asleep, which assures Dean's loyalty to her forever. It's not a surprise when, a few months after graduation, Sam says that they're getting engaged. It is a bigger surprise when Sam says that they're moving back to Lawrence. 

He cites the fact that Jessica isn't close with her family, that housing costs are astronomical in the Bay area, that the cold, damp weather was starting to get to him, but Dean knows--the move was so that Sam could be closer to his family. Closer to him. 

On the phone, when Sam tells him the news, Dean says, "You're going to have to cut your hair before you move back here. We don't take kindly to hippies 'round these parts." 

If there were someone to direct his gratitude towards, then Dean would. All he can do for the moment however, is just breathe a sigh of relief. 

\---

John retires, leaving the shop in Dean's name. With Ash, Garth, and Jo working on repairs, Dean working on restoration, Bobby on parts, and Charlie at the front desk, _Winchester's Auto_ becomes one of the best shops in the Lawrence area. Dean does all right for himself--buys a house, makes a few investments. 

He starts dating Lisa Braeden. 

Lisa is a yoga instructor, which is exactly as thrilling as it sounds, and she and Dean spend quite a few weekends discovering just how bendy she really is. 

(Very, very bendy is the answer. What are joints?)

Dean gets along well with her kid, Ben, who accepts Dean's presence in his life with a sort of bemused caution. He teaches Ben how to change a tire, how to throw a proper spiral on a football, and how to fix up Lisa's crumbling backyard fence. On the weekends, Dean goes to the movies, shopping, and on trips to the zoo and park. After a year, he and Lisa make the leap to living together, combining furniture and kitchen implements and figuring out how they get Ben to and from school and sports. The next year, Dean invites Lisa and Ben to his parents' home for Thanksgiving dinner. He watches Lisa talk with Jess, sees Ben interact with John and Sam, eats his mother's pumpkin pie and thinks _Yeah, this could be my life. That would be all right._

\---

Dean's life has always been blessed. 

That comes to a screeching halt on September 18th. It's a Thursday. 

A customer inquiring about restoring a '69 Mustang keeps him in the office until late in the evening. Dean loves the restoration work, he really does, and he can tell that this old girl is going to be a beauty when he gets her finished, but the guy asks him so many asinine questions that by the time he leaves, Dean's ready to put his fist through the wall. 

"Looked rough," Charlie says, without looking up from her phone, when he finally escapes the office. 

"How many times can you ask 'How much is replacing the interior' before you accept the answer?" Dean seethes. He forgot to text Lisa and tell her that he was going to be late tonight. She won't get pissy, that's not quite her style, but she does get worried. "Jesus." He looks again at Charlie. "You didn't have to wait up, you know." 

"No worries." Charlie puts down her phone. "I had a few invoices to work through, and there were a few tweaks to the website that I wanted to make. And then I figured that I might as well get paid for sitting around and doing nothing." 

Despite his mood, a smile tugs at the corners of Dean's lips. Charlie stuck around because she knew he would be in a bad mood afterward. He really doesn't deserve the people that he's surrounded himself with. 

"Right. Well, go home. Give Gilda my best." 

By the time Dean makes it home, his stomach is rumbling. He parks next to Lisa's sensible SUV, noting the lights in the kitchen. Thank god, maybe she'll already have something made. He can apologize, maybe whip up a batch of cookies or something as an apology. 

"Lis? Ben?" The house is unusually quiet when he enters--no TV, no good-natured bickering, not even the sound of the stereo playing. Dean's footsteps echo as he walks through the laundry room and into the kitchen. The scent of burning food greets him. Cursing, Dean shuts the oven off and pulls what was supposed to be a roasted chicken out of the oven. "The hell?" Lisa would never leave something in the oven and forget about it. She's tenacious, mind like a steel trap. 

"Lisa? Ben?" Instinct has him scrambling in the hall closet and pulling out one of his golf clubs. He's fairly useless in a fight--other than a few times in college, he hasn't even been in a fight, but he could rise to the occasion. For Lisa. For Ben. 

Golf club held high, he rounds the corner of the living room and walks into a nightmare. 

Three strangers stand in his living room, one woman and two men. They're severely beautiful, in the way that cold marble is beautiful. Dressed in business casual, they're more menacing than if they'd been in leather and spikes. Worse still, Lisa and Ben sit on the floor, back to back, their hands bound behind them. A gag sits between Lisa's teeth, but above it, her eyes are wide and terrified. 

The woman smiles, cold as a shark. "Dean Winchester." Something's off about the rhythms of her voice, like she's never actually heard someone talk in real life, only gotten disjointed lessons in how it should be done. Her voice slides oily down Dean's spine. "Welcome home." 

"Look, whatever you want, you can take it. I've got my wallet right here, there's stuff that you can take--No one needs to get hurt, right?" Dean looks at Lisa, trying to reassure her--_It's going to be all right, you're going to be all right, you're going to be fine._ "Just take whatever you want." 

When the woman laughs, the glass in the room shivers. "You think we're after your...possessions?" She sneers at the curios surrounding her. One small shove of her finger has a china figurine falling to the floor, where it shatters. "You think that we care about that?" Anger clouds the disgust on her face. "You think we care about your petty, human life?" 

She throws her head back. "Castiel! Castiel, show yourself!" 

At the sound of that word, _Castiel_, a jolt runs through Dean. It's so cold that it's hot, or so hot that it's freezing. It's fire and thunderstorms, the flash and bang of lightning, the sound of waves crashing against the cliffs. Dean thinks of that word and sparks flash through him. 

Only for a moment. Then it fades, as swiftly as it arrived, and he's left in his living room, with three strangers and his bound girlfriend and psuedo-son. "Please," Dean tries. "Please, don't hurt them." 

The woman slants her eyes at the men. "Kill the woman and the boy. Hurt _him_ until he decides to show his face." 

A muffled scream comes out from Lisa's mouth, while Ben starts shaking. A strangled denial sprouts from Dean's mouth and he springs forward, golf club at the ready--_Don't hurt them, don't hurt them, don't you fucking dare hurt them_\--He's ready to slam the club into the closest man's skull but then--

Dean's sent flying. He crashes against the opposite wall and slumps to the ground. Pain scorches a path through his body as he tries to remember how to breathe. He's never felt agony like this, where it's all-consuming, where he forgets his extremities in the face of it. He gasps but can't get any air into his lungs. 

How did that bastard manage to put him into the wall? He didn't even touch Dean. One second, Dean was running towards him, golf club cocked back in preparation for a swing that would hopefully take his head off, and in the next second--All he did was put his hand out. He never touched him. 

Dean's ponderings are cut short by a sharp, terrified scream. "Lisa," he slurs. From somewhere, he manages to find the strength to push himself up and move forward, only to find-- "No. God no." 

Dean chokes around his horror as his feet slip in the spreading pool of blood. Ben lies on the ground, his wide eyes terrified. His grey shirt is dark in the middle, the blood stains spreading across the fabric. The golf club clatters to the ground from Dean's nerveless fingers. He crawls forward, numb, terrified. His hands are cold, but Ben's blood is warm, so warm and sticky. Lisa leans over Ben. Somehow in the scuffle, her hands have come free. She presses them now to Ben's face, to his hands, while she murmurs soothingly at him. 

One of the men holds a sharp silver knife unlike anything that Dean's ever seen before. It's triangular shaped and tapers into a wicked point. Blood drips off the tip. Dean's never killed anything before--the one time that Dad's friend Bobby tried to take him and Sam hunting, he and Sam wailed so much about the prospect of killing something that they managed to clear the entire forest of animals--but in this moment, Dean wants to kill. He wants to _hurt_ someone. 

"I wouldn't try it." The woman appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and fists her hand into his hair. "We need you alive, but that doesn't mean that we can't make you hurt for a long, long time." 

She shakes Dean once, like a disobedient puppy. "Castiel!" she shouts again, rage and triumph in the curl of her teeth. "Castiel, we have Dean Winchester!"

She raises her free hand. The same silver knife gleams in her hand, light arching down its tapered blade. Less than ten feet away from them, Ben is bleeding out on the living room rug, the one that Dean and Lisa went back and forth on for over an hour. Lisa won that argument, Lisa who's sobbing helplessly as she runs blood-tacky fingers over Ben's still face. 

"Please," Dean whispers. "Please." 

The woman brings the blade down in a graceful arc. Dean's skin splits. A peal of thunder, a crash of light. 

_Castiel._


	2. hear our sighs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel is a tempest in human form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Working quickly on this--not beta'd because we die like men in this house. Any mistakes you find are mine and unintentional.
> 
> Trigger warning--A character indicates that they will engage in self-harm (no self-harm actually occurs).

_We cannot pass our guardian angel's bounds; resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.--Saint Augustine_

\---

A thunderclap splits the living room. A vicious wind sweeps through the room, scattering paper and bringing tears to Dean's eyes. White light lances through the windows, shatters the television, burns his retinas. A shrill wail encompasses everything--when Dean puts his hands over his ears and tries to scream, he can't hear his own voice. His whole body feels as though it's trapped inside a pressure cooker--he can't move, can't breathe, can't even _think_, when finally--

Everything disappears. 

Dean breathes shakily, just to see if he can. A second later, he finds that he can move. The woman's hand has fallen away from his head, and Dean uses this opportunity to crawl away on shaking limbs barely able to support his weight. He finds Lisa, unconscious next to Ben. Ben's skin is cold. "Wake up," Dean whispers, frantically, desperately. "Come on Ben, come on buddy. You have to wake up." 

Movement catches his eye and draws his attention away from the broken remnants of his family. The three intruders fan out in a semicircle, but there's a new addition to the occupants of the room. 

Dean's stomach drops and lurches when he sees the tan coat. He's jolted back into the memories of that day--the woman with her black eyes, the heat and thunder coming from the man. The same kind of high-pitched squeal that had attacked his ears. 

His breath catches in his throat when the coat's owner turns around. It's the same...Over twenty years have passed since that day, but this man looks exactly the same as he does in Dean's memories. Still the same face, the same clothes. The only difference is in his eyes--instead of sadness, these eyes are narrow chips of blue ice. 

"Castiel," the woman sneers. Though she flips her blade in her palm, there's still a sort of hesitation to her movements. Almost as if...is she afraid?

"You have no right to be here Hester." Castiel's voice is the same--that low rumble that promises earthquakes and fire. 

The woman--Hester--laughs. There's something unhinged in it, something desperate. "_I_ have no right to be here? How dare you say that to me! You, you who circumvented the laws of nature and time--and for what?" Her eyes cut to Dean. Lip curling, she turns back to Castiel. "So that _he_ could--"

"Enough." Castiel's voice never rises but a hush descends upon the room all the same. "I will give you the option because, once, you were my sister. Leave." 

Hester's laugh raises the hairs on the back of Dean's neck. "Sister? You, you misshapen, abomination of a creature, you were never any brother of mine. My brother died in his duty, died as you should have done so long ago--" 

She lunges forward, knife-first. Dean clutches Lisa and Ben to him, frozen. He should leave. He should take both of them, put them in the Impala and floor it to the hospital. But instead he watches as Castiel moves out of the way of Hester's knife. 

Fear lodges in Dean's throat as the other two men move in. Now, instead of one on one, Castiel is outnumbered, and all of his opponents have shown that they can and will hurt. Dean doesn't know why he's so terrified, unless it's that, in this fucked-up situation, Castiel seems to be the only one who doesn't want Dean or his family hurt. 

"You!" Hester screams. Far off, Dean hears the sound of glass shattering. "You ruined everything! Everything you touch withers and dies--you leave one world in tatters and then you come here and think that you can change things? That you can make a difference?" She points a wild finger at Dean. "He and his brother already have their destinies, they already know their purpose--You think that you can change that?" 

The three assholes close in, blades raised. Dean's breath catches in his throat--once they're dead, there's going to be no reason that they won't turn on him, Ben, and Lisa--but then all the air is sucked out of the room. Dean struggles for that moment to breathe, his eyes bulging in his skull, before he's flown backwards with the force of the subsequent implosion. 

The three bodies are flung backward, leaving Castiel standing in the middle of the room. His face is severe as he locks eyes with Hester. "I gave you the opportunity to flee. After everything that I have done, did you think that I would balk at this?" 

Behind Castiel, one of the men rushes forward, blade held at the ready. The cry of alarm is stoppered in Dean's throat, but it doesn't matter. Castiel pivots easily, the blade sinking into the man's belly. 

The breath startles out of Dean's lungs. In his living room...Lisa and Ben are unconscious on the floor, Ben's blood is soaked into the fabric of his pants, and this man, this whatever he is, Castiel...has just stabbed another man. 

The craziness doesn't stop there. There's a long moment where it seems like the world holds its breath before an awful scream sounds through the room. Light sears through the room, coming from the man's...eyes? His mouth? The light, bright white, almost blue, scorches Dean's eyes, so much so that he has to bury his face in the crook of his elbow. When he's finally able to look, the man lies dead on the floor. Ash surrounds his body, floating down in little flakes, almost like feathers. 

Hester and the other man don't hold back, if they were holding back before. They attack in unison, moving gracefully around Castiel. One strikes while the other sets up their next position. They're trying to keep Castiel occupied and on the defensive. From what Dean sees, it's a good strategy. Neither one of them are able to score a direct hit on Castiel, but Castiel also can't break free of the pattern to start his own attack. Eventually, he will tire. 

Unless Dean does something. 

He doesn't know why he moves. Maybe it's because the adrenaline thrumming through his body won't let him do anything else. Maybe it's some long-dead survival instinct rearing its head for the first time in his life. Maybe it's because Cas saved his life when he was a child and showed up again when Dean didn't think that there was any hope left. Maybe it's just the fact that he's always been stupid. 

Whatever the reason, Dean's hand lands on the golf club as he crawls his way forward. Hester and the other man are too focused on Castiel to notice his approach. In fact, none of them notice him, until he slams the golf club into the small of the man's back. He stumbles forward, enough for Castiel to spring free of his trap. 

Hester looks at him, her eyes wide with shock and rage. "You--" She flicks her fingers at him. 

Once more, Dean flies through the air, but this time when he hits, he's greeted with the sound of that scream once more--guttural yet piercing, a cry of horror and disbelief, almost like the world is crying. Once again, light blazes through the room, forcing Dean to duck his head. This time, when he manages to gather himself and look up, only Hester circles Castiel. 

"Please," Castiel says. His plea is somewhat negated by the slow drip of blood off the tip of his blade. "Please. At one point in time, we fought alongside each other. No one has been hurt by my actions." 

Hester sneers. A thin line of blood runs down her face, from her mussed blonde hair. Her suit is torn in several places, but she still looks fearsome, still looks deadly. "You upended the universe, and for what? For a human? Or for your own selfish desires?" Her cold eyes flick up and down Castiel's form. "His corruption is still burning within you. No matter where you go or how hard you try, you'll never be free of it." 

"Perhaps not," Castiel says. He flips the blade in his hand. "Perhaps that's the only thing that gives me peace." 

When Castiel lunges forward, Dean loses sight of him. Castiel and Hester turn into two blurs, one tan and one navy, as they circle and fight. The sounds of their blades clashing shatters the air. Having done his part, it's all that Dean can do to not pass out. Sharp pain rockets through his body--no doubt the result of having been thrown against two walls. He looks over to where Lisa and Ben are--Lisa is still unconscious, Ben is too still. Pushing aside the pain in his body, Dean tries to move towards them, but only makes it a few feet before he has to stop, gasping in pain. 

"Please," Dean whispers. He clenches his fist against the smooth, hardwood floor. "Castiel, please." 

He doesn't know what he's begging for, only that, as he looks at the flurry of the fight, Castiel stops for just a moment. Those blue eyes lock on his, and Dean thinks that, if he had enough time, he might be able to find all the answers that he sought in those eyes. Then Hester strikes and the moment is lost. 

It's inevitable, how it ends. Hester is a dervish, but Castiel is a tempest in human form. Hester's rage burns bright, but in the end, it's only a swift flash in the pan. Castiel, Dean senses, could endure for years. His blade sinks into Hester's chest, leaving her sputtering and confused. The same light explodes out of her eyes and mouth, but Castiel supports her body to the ground, laying it out almost tenderly. He straightens and looks down at her, something incomprehensible in his expression. 

Then, his head lifts and he focuses on Dean. Dean's had other people look at him--duh, thirty years on this earth, quite a few people have looked at him--but never like this. Castiel looks at him like he can read every thought that Dean's ever had, the good and bad. Like he can tell that one time Dean ate all the Halloween candy and then blamed it on Sam, like Dean stole a few Playgirls when he was fifteen and jerked off to them in his bedroom before he burned them in shame, like Dean always kinda sorta had a crush on Benny in college but never bothered to tell him. 

"Dean." Castiel crosses the length of the living room in just a few steps. He kneels beside Dean, the tails of his coat flaring out behind him. Gentle hands coax Dean to lay on his back, and he can't find the will to resist. "I'm so sorry Dean." 

A large hand splays over his forehead. Dean instinctively tries to jerk away from the touch--it's too intimate, too familiar, too _something_, but firm fingertips keep his head stationary. Warmth spreads through his body with the faintest tingle of electricity. Dean gasps at the sensation, like a thousand volts coursing through his body, like the best cup of hot chocolate seeking out the chill in his body. 

Castiel takes his hand away from Dean's forehead. For a few tense moments, Dean waits for the inevitable slam of pain but then...it doesn't come. He pushes himself upright, body trembling, but blessedly free of pain. "What did you...Who are you?" he asks. 

Castiel stares at him. The lines around his eyes and mouth deepen with Dean's question. Such sad eyes. 

Dean gets the impression that Castiel is searching through a catalogue of acceptable answers, trying to give him the most sanitized one. "Who are you?" Dean asks. One hand flails out and lands on Castiel's wrist. "I've seen you before--I thought that I made you up, but I didn't. You were there, that day with the woman, and you're here now--How did you even...How are you here? You didn't come through a door, she just called your name and then you were here--"

"Dean." Castiel's voice cuts Dean off. It's a powerful voice, like thunderstorms and the shifting of continents. "You have questions, I know. But it's safer for you if you don't ask them. It's safer for you if you forget this whole encounter." 

Castiel reaches two fingers out to him, but Dean flinches away from the touch. "The hell are you talking about?" he snaps. "Forget? Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm Castiel." 

Dean restrains the urge to roll his eyes. "Yeah, I got that. I mean, who the..._what_ are you?" 

Dean's never been superstitious, not really. Not in the way that throws salt over his shoulder or that doesn't walk underneath ladders. But ever since he was a child, he's maintained a vague belief in the supernatural, in the world unseen. Castiel can't be human. No human enters a room without the use of a door, no human could look exactly the same after twenty years. 

For a moment, Dean can see when Castiel considers answering. He can also see the moment when Castiel decides against it. "I'm someone that you would be better off forgetting. Please Dean. It's for your own good." 

Dean's about to argue the logic of that when he hears a soft groan. Immediately, his heart sinks to his stomach. _Lisa. Ben._ How could he have forgotten them, even for a second? What kind of piece of shit does that make him? 

Dean half-crawls, half-stumbles to where Lisa is lying. He gathers her up, breathing in relief when he finds a pulse. He turns his attention to Ben--Ben, whose skin is cold and pale, Ben, whose chest isn't moving, Ben, whose lifeblood puddles on the floor underneath him. 

There's no one to turn to, no recourse of action, nothing other than-- "Castiel." 

Castiel stares through him. Dean has the impression that Castiel knows full and well what he wants, but will wait for him to ask. "Can you help them? Please?"

Dean doesn't know what his hold over this man is. He doesn't know what prompted Castiel to help him all those years ago or even tonight. He's never met the man, never seen him, never heard his name. Castiel has no reason to obey. But he does. He kneels beside Lisa and touches his fingertips to her temple, gently. He barely disturbs her dark hair. She groans softly, but doesn't wake. 

Castiel takes longer over Ben, his forehead furrowed in concentration. Dean holds his breath, hardly daring to hope--Ben was _so_ cold...He'd lost _so_ much blood. Dean's almost lost hope, when Ben stirs softly, a wet cough caught in his throat. 

"Ben!" Without loosing his hold on Lisa, Dean crawls forward to Ben. He's warm, delightfully warm, a flush returning to his cheeks. 

Holding both Ben and Lisa in his hands, Dean turns and looks at Castiel. "Thank you." He can't help but bury his nose in Lisa's hair to scent the familiar aroma of her shampoo. "Thank you, thank you." 

Castiel's lips move in what would be a smile, if it didn't have so much sorrow attached to the gesture. "Of course Dean." 

Reality sets in as Dean looks around his living room. Blood and ash are spattered over the floor and walls. Glass litters the floor and there are giant dents in the walls. "What am I supposed to tell the cops when they get here?" There are three dead bodies in his living room. They're not just going to ignore that. 

"Don't worry about that." 

Dean doesn't know what's happening until it's too late. By then, Castiel's fingers are already at his temples. "No, don't you dare--" 

Dean's voice slurs into nothing. The last thing that he sees are those sad blue eyes looking at him, a wealth of sorrow and compassion in their depths. 

\---

Dean Winchester has always lived a blessed life. 

They're all so lucky, he's told, all three of them. They should have all been killed. There's been a series of home invasions through Lawrence, and the perpetrators haven't left any alive. Ben almost died from his injuries. If the EMTs hadn't arrived so quickly, called by a conscientious neighbor, then he would have died. 

The police ask him, in the waiting room that reeks of piss covered up with disinfectant, what they looked like. How they were dressed. If they said anything. They ask what he did to survive. 

Dean can only shake his aching head and tell them _I don't know. I don't remember._ When he's not concentrating, he thinks that he can almost see them--three shadowy figures lurking in his living room with bright silver lights in their hands. The room reeks of ozone and electricity. He can hear something in the distance--thunder and lightning. A reckoning. But when Dean tries to gather those memories together and put them into words, he can't. They disappear, as insubstantial as fog through his fingers, until Dean's left with one word. 

_Castiel._

He looks it up on his phone. He's redirected to a page for 'Cassiel', the supposed angel of Thursdays. He rolls his eyes at the coincidence--he's attacked in his house on a Thursday, and all that he can remember is an angel attached to Thursdays? Please. There's nothing else. 

Sam and Jess visit. So his mom and dad. They all hug him, careful of his sore body, and stop into the rooms to see Lisa and Ben. His father lurks at the edges of the room. He doesn't say anything, but Dean senses it--his father thinks that he should have done something, anything, to protect his family. Dean feels the sting of shame, even without his father's presence. Doesn't he already know that? A man protects his family and what had he done for Lisa and Ben? 

Sam sits with him, his large body folded into the tiny hospital chairs. He keeps his mouth shut, for which Dean is grateful. "If you want to stay with me and Jess for a while, you know that we'd be more than happy to have you," he finally says. 

"Thanks, but no. I'd really just like to get back to normal as soon as possible." Sam nods and tries to look happy, but worry still lurks behind his eyes. Dean gets the impression that there's something that Sam isn't telling him, but he doesn't push. He can't, not when he's scraped raw around the edges. He just wants to get Lisa and Ben, take them home, and pretend like nothing ever happened. 

He has the living room cleaned, spare no expense. Jess stops by to inform him that the job's done. She does tell him, after a moment's hesitation, about the vandalism that was performed. "It's weird," she says, her eyes darting around to the crowded hallway, "because I have no idea how it was done." 

"I don't remember anything," Dean says, more exhaustion than temper in his voice. He's tired of saying it--to his family, to the police, to Lisa. The doctors are willing to chalk up his memory loss to head trauma--get bashed into a wall and you're bound to lose a few important details--but everyone keeps pushing him. He _should_ remember is the clear implication. He should be able to stop the people who threatened his home. 

"They burned wings," Jessica says, her hazel eyes troubled. "There were three sets of wings burned into the floor and walls. Like, really detailed. You could see the outline of feathers. And they were huge too--like twelve feet long." 

"I don't know Jess. I don't know what happened, I don't know why--" 

A flash hits Dean, as subtle as a locomotive. He can remember a flash of light, a scream that sounded like it was going to shatter the world. He remembers heat so intense that he thought his skin was going to boil. He remembers a flash of silver, he remembers blue--

_Castiel!_

He comes back to himself and the feel of Jess' fingers gripping his shoulders. "Do I need to call a doctor?" she asks. 'How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I'm fine." Dean doesn't push her away because that's a dick move, but he does shrug away from her grasp. "Besides, I hit my head two days ago. That's when they check for the concussion." 

Jess' face twists in concern and disapproval, but she doesn't push the matter. No doubt she's learned her lesson from Sam: when the Winchester men don't want to talk, nothing short of hell on earth will drag the words from their lips. 

"You know that no one blames you," she says, when the silence between them stretches for several long, uncomfortable minutes. "You did everything that you could." 

"Yeah, but it wasn't enough was it?" The second that the words are out of his mouth, Dean regrets the heat behind them. Jess doesn't deserve his pity party. Not after she's been such a champ in helping get the house cleaned and make sure that the garage is still running smoothly. "I just...I should be able to do something. I can't even tell the police what they looked like or what they wanted." 

"Dean, literally no one thinks that you should be doing more. You forget. I went to your house. I saw the hole in your wall where you head went through. The fact that you're still alive is a miracle. So please, don't beat yourself up over this. Everyone is just glad that you're alive." 

Dean thanks her for her words and tries to believe them. He doesn't tell her how Lisa won't meet his eyes whenever he goes to sit in her room or how Ben flinches back from his touch. He doesn't tell her about the dreams--dreams of fire and ash, dreams of silver knives and crimson blood. He doesn't tell her that he wakes every morning with a name he can't quite pronounce struggling for freedom. He doesn't tell her that the only thing he can remember about that night is a sad pair of deep, blue eyes. 

\---

Dean Winchester's life has always been blessed. 

Lisa goes to stay with her sister. He's not invited.

"It's not about you," she insists, while standing in the kitchen and looking everywhere but at Dean. "I just...It's this house. I can't stay here anymore. Ben can't sleep." Her hands are restless things, wringing each other, the hem of her shirt, and everything in between. "I just come home and all I can think about is." Her eyes dart towards the living room. 

From what she's told him, Dean knows that night is a blur in Lisa's mind as well, but she seems to remember something that he doesn't. Namely, that it's his fault that Ben was hurt in the first place. She doesn't say anything, but he can tell in the way that she withdraws from him, the way that, even now, she keeps the kitchen island firmly between their bodies. Dean wants to reach out and comfort her, but she's miles away. 

"I'll call you. When we get there." Lisa's small, sad smile tells him that the bags are packed. It says goodbye.

Dean puts the bags in her SUV. Ben still can't meet his eyes and, when Dean tries to give him a hug, sidles away from him. Dean bites back the hurt and turns to Lisa. She's stiff in his arms when he hugs her. He doesn't even try to kiss her. 

She doesn't look back as she pulls out of the driveway. 

\---

Dean Winchester's life is no longer blessed. 

His work at the garage seems hopelessly repetitive. He snaps at Ash and Jo because at least they'll snap back at him. He snipes at Charlie, who gives him the silent treatment for two days, and he rails at Garth, who does everything but roll belly-up in an effort to placate him. Bobby sits him down and tears into him, but even that doesn't serve to dispel the cloud hanging over Dean's life. 

He stops going to his parent's house, he doesn't return Sam's calls. His life fell apart one Thursday evening and for the life of him, Dean can't figure out why. The police have no leads. The last time that Dean bothers calling for information on his case, the detective in charge gently suggests that perhaps his time would best be spent on other affairs--i.e., he doesn't have a fucking clue who stormed into Dean's house and tried to murder his family. 

He dreams more, without Lisa. He sometimes dreams of that night, odd, disjointed little images slipping through his subconscious. Dean clings to them--knives and blood, and wings, the tails of a coat flapping sharply, warmth so sharp that it hurts. A name rumbles on the edges of his consciousness and Dean clutches at it, even as it fades from his awareness. 

He wakes gasping the name--_Castiel_. 

That name _means_ something. 

Now if he only knew what. 

\---

Once Dean has the name Castiel in his awareness, more images come to him. 

A tan trenchcoat, an ill-fitting suit. A face dotted with a permanent shadow of stubble, a shock of ill-kept, dark hair. Large blue eyes that seem to reflect the world around them. A silver knife, dripping in blood. A woman, her anger incandescent and directed towards Dean, and a force stepping in to protect him. A low voice--_It would be better for you if you forget this._

At that, Dean jolts awake. 

_Why_ would it be better if he forgot? He chases the thought around his head all day at work. Several times Charlie acts like she wants to engage him in conversation, but every time she thinks better of it. Somewhere, deep down, Dean feels a little bit of guilt--he's been so awful lately that one of his best friends won't dare talk to him, but on the whole, he's relieved. He doesn't want to talk and ruin the train that his thoughts are taking. 

Someone was angry at him. Someone was angry enough at him to hurt him, and this man, this _Castiel_ was there to help him. But then he left? He thought that it would be better for Dean to forget? 

Well, fuck that. Dean's girlfriend left him because he couldn't give her a straight answer as to what happened. But more than that, Lisa left because, even though she might not have had conclusive proof, she knew what Dean's been apparently hiding from himself for weeks--the attack was his fault. Those people were after him, for whatever reason. Well, again, fuck that. If someone's after him, he deserves to know why. 

None of this explains why he stands outside in the deserted garage long after closing, his emergency whiskey bottle clutched in his hand. "Castiel!" From the disjointed images his dreams show, that's the prelude to his showing. Just a simple calling of his name. 

That's not quite all there is to it, Dean discovers, thirty minutes later after he's shouted himself hoarse. "Castiel!" he bellows, before throwing the bottle to the ground in a fit of impetuous rage. "Come on, you owe me this! My whole life's in shambles, my girlfriend left--Castiel! Show yourself, you son of a bitch!" 

Nothing stirs the night, other than himself. The cars are silent witnesses to his rage. The moonlight lances off their windshields, sending a dizzying amount of reflections back towards him, but no Castiel. 

After an hour of shouting and raging, Dean slumps against a car. He's exhausted and feeling more than a little stupid. What was he thinking--that strange men just show up out of the blue when called upon? When he thinks about it for more than a minute, he's ashamed at how idiotic he must look. People don't appear out of the clear sky. 

Unless. 

An idea seizes Dean--reckless and utterly mad, but he's a little drunk and feeling a little mad. He grabs at one of the larger pieces of glass in the parking lot. The moonlight lances off its jagged edges. The light catches in Dean's eyes and for a second he pauses. If he's wrong in this, then he's possibly killed himself, and for what reason? A hypothesis, to meet a man who may or may not exist, and who doesn't want to see Dean if he does exist. But if he's right...

"Castiel." Dean doesn't bother shouting; his shredded voice can't take it anyway. He holds the glass against his wrist, just barely touching the tender flesh with the sharp edge. Against the sharp edge, his pulse beats a frantic rhythm. "Castiel, if you can hear me, then listen--You seem to have some kind of vested interest in keeping me alive. Well, I've got a piece of glass next to my wrist and if you don't show yourself in the next thirty seconds, then you can pick up the pieces of what's left. You hear me, you bastard? You've got thirty seconds to show yourself to me before you can prove just how badly you want me alive." 

He's shaking as he counts down in his head. He's feeling just reckless enough to do it, even as his rational brain shrieks at him. He has no idea if Castiel is even real, or whether it's something that his desperate brain concocted in between fear and pain. Even if Castiel is real, then there's no guarantee that he wants Dean alive badly enough to call his bluff. 

But Dean has to know. He has to...He has to know. 

Thirty seconds pass. Dean drags in a deep breath and pushes the glass into his skin, hard enough to bring a single bead of red blooming forth. Another second while he screws up his courage and then--

A soft rush of air breaks the silence of the night. The soft flap of feathers, a whisper of a disturbance, the universe shifting and rustling for just a moment before it settles and then--

Strong fingers clamp around his left wrist, halting his motions. Startled, Dean looks up into a familiar pair of blue eyes, narrowed in rage. 

_Castiel._

"I knew that you were foolish, but it seems that even I underestimated the depths of your stupidity," he says, which really, rude. Then again, Dean was the one pushing a piece of broken glass into his wrist. 

Dean struggles to hold onto his piece of broken glass; it's the only weapon that he has. Castiel, however, pries his fingers apart with laughable ease. He yanks the glass away from Dean and flings it somewhere in the distance. If Dean strains his ears, he can hear the moment when it shatters. 

"All the work I've done to keep you alive, and this is how you choose to repay me." 

Well, that answers that question at least. "So you admit it--you have been keeping me alive." 

An emotion that isn't anger stutters across Castiel's face--like he hadn't wanted to admit that it was largely due to his efforts that Dean is still among the living. His expression smooths out easily enough, but Dean holds onto that one slip of composure--proof that it can happen. 

"A not inconsiderable task, you'll admit. And once again, this is how you choose to repay me--by ignorantly trying to end your own life? By attempting a hostage situation?" Castiel's voice never rises, but the earth still shakes when he speaks. It's not an exaggeration--at his back, the car hums slightly from the vibrations. 

"I needed you and you wouldn't come. So I needed something to get you here." 

For a moment, Castiel stares at him in what Dean would imagine is affronted shock. Then, his expression cracks. He does something akin to rolling his eyes as he looks up towards the heavens. "Of course," Dean hears him mutter. "Of course, you would think this." 

"What else did you want me to do?" Dean demands. The sheen of drunkenness over his mind makes him bolder than he otherwise would be with something that isn't, that can't be, human. "I needed to...I needed to see you." 

"Well, of course you did." Castiel rounds on him, the lines around his mouth tight and white with anger. "Of course you needed me, because that's what you do, isn't it? You need me." Dean blinks, unsure of the source of Castiel's rage. It seems that, unknowingly, Dean's put his finger on a pressure point and pushed mercilessly. "Never mind what I say, never mind what I do to try to keep you safe, you _need_ me, and that justifies whatever you do."

"Yes?" Dean tries. 

This time Castiel does roll his eyes. His lip curls back from his teeth as he surveys Dean. "I can't do this," Castiel finally decides. "I can't have this conversation with you while you're inebriated." 

"Well, buckle in, because it's going to take me a few hours at least--" Dean stutters to a stop as Castiel storms forward. His reflexes are so dulled that he can't even flinch away as Castiel raises two fingers to his forehead. 

"Hey, don't touch--" But it's too late. Castiel pushes at his skull, hard enough to hurt. A zing of _something_ rockets through Dean, warm and tingling. When it subsides, he sways on his feet, but it's all for show. The fuzziness in his brain, the blurriness of his vision and the churning of his stomach...They're all gone. Instead of the comfortable numbness, he's facing icy cold, unforgiving, sobriety. "The hell did you do?"

"I told you." Castiel doesn't do anything so childish as sneer, but there's a definite slant of satisfaction to his face. "I can't talk to you when you're drunk." 

'Yeah well. Like you're such good conversationalist," Dean mumbles. Now that he doesn't have the curtain of alcohol to mask his emotions, he feels oddly embarrassed. 

Castiel doesn't pace but from the way that his gaze flickers around the parking lot, he might as well. He gives the impression of restlessness without ever moving, as he squares his posture and lifts his chin. He's got a jawline that could slice bread, Castiel does, Dean notices, then feels oddly guilty for noticing. 

"What did you want?" Far from the irritation of before, Castiel's voice reflects only exhaustion. When Dean flicks his eyes towards him again, he notices how the harsh floodlights seem to accentuate the hard lines of Castiel's face. "You wanted me here, I assume for some reason?"

"Yeah." Dean swallows. He has so many questions, but somehow, when Castiel has that thin, defeated sliver in his voice, it seems rude to ask them. Then, he remembers that he's Dean Winchester, and he grows a pair. "The hell?"

Castiel's stare could level mountains. "I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean," he says, voice frigid.

Dean throws his hands in the air, overwhelmed by the immensity of his request. "I mean, what the hell? All of it! Who were those people at my house? What were they after? Why is this happening? Why does my girlfriend blame me?" He rounds on Castiel, an accusing finger pointing at the man. "And why did they seem to think that you were to blame? What the hell have you done?" He pokes his finger into Castiel's chest. It's akin to pushing at a brick wall. Dude must work out. 

Castiel's expression never changes, except for in the shadow of his eyes. There, Dean watches him crumple. 

"It was you, wasn't it," Dean says, a little quieter. "When I was a kid. With that woman. It was you that came after me." 

Castiel blinks and his face softens. "Yes," he answers. "She...she was going to hurt you. In order to get what she wanted." 

"What did she want? What did those people want? Why is all of this happening?" 

"Dean, trust me when I say that while you might _think_ that you want these answers, you don't want the responsibility that knowledge will entail." 

Dean bristles. "What, you think I'm too much of a pussy? You can't handle the truth?"

Castiel's expression seems caught between frustration and concern. "You're just a man Dean. You don't deserve this."

"You're damn right that I don't deserve it, so you tell me what the hell is going on! That was..." Ben, on the floor, his hands fluttering around his stomach. Blood ground deep into the grooves on his hands, Lisa's tears... "That was my kid that they hurt, Castiel. You owe me this." 

He's not prepared for the swift flash of emotion on Castiel's face. He looks stricken, undone. For some reason, Dean wants to apologize. 

"Hester was correct, in a way, when she blamed me." Delivered in a monotone, it takes a moment before the words sink into Dean's brain. 

"What the hell? Why?"

Castiel's expression is imploring. "You must understand, I meant to undo it, to make it correct. This was _supposed_ to balance out the scales. No one was supposed to get hurt." 

"Look, Cas--" The lighting isn't the best, here in the garage's parking lot, but even so, Dean knows that he didn't imagine Castiel's flinch. It's a full-body shudder, like he's been struck. "Castiel. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer and I need shit explained to me real simple like. This whole "balancing the scales" thing, I just ain't getting. So let's start real simple, from the beginning, all right? First question--Who the hell..._What_ the hell are you?" 

Castiel takes a step closer, bringing him fully into the spotlight. Even though nothing he does is threatening, Dean's breath still catches in his throat. Castiel's eyes are ageless as they lock onto his. His chin rises high. The air is dense around them, summer rainstorm flickering on the horizon. Castiel exhales softly, in a long rush. 

The streetlight above flashes bright, brighter than should be possible. Dean's pupils scream from the glare, but he can't take his eyes off of Castiel, he can't...What the hell are _those_, except he knows what they are. 

Wings. Giant shadows of black wings rising high above Castiel. Thunder rumbles in the distance, the cosmos stirring. Dean can't breathe, he can't...

The light shatters above them but no glass ever strikes his body. 

Dean's wheezing, hands on his knees. Castiel lingers at the edges of his vision, like he wants to approach but is unsure of his welcome. Just in case he gets brave, Dean holds up a hand. The meaning is plain--_Stay the hell away_. Castiel obeys. He does that weird flinch thing again, like Dean's just dug his fingers into a still healing wound, but he never comes close. 

"What...what the hell?" Dean finally manages to get out. 

He knows, of course. How many times had his mother said that stupid little phrase to him as a child? Those wings--There's nothing else that Castiel could be. Still, it's a shock to the system when Castiel draws himself up and says, "Guess again." 

His voice is a little colder than it was before. Now, even if Dean bade him to come closer, he doesn't know if Castiel would. He thinks back to that guilty little flinch, that startled, hurt look in Castiel's eyes, there for just a moment before it was smoothed away. There's still so much here that he doesn't understand. 

"That's not--you can't--"

"Dean." There's infinite compassion and boundless sorrow in Castiel's eyes, even as power crackles around him. He's not human, not even close. 

"I'm an angel of the Lord." 

~*~*~*


	3. catch your fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting to know Castiel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay chaps, but here it is! <3

~*~*~*~*

_Where loved ones failed you, guardian angels will stand ready to catch your fall.--Shannon Adler_

\---

Dean knows that he heard Castiel correctly, but his brain still can't accept the words. 

"You're a what?"

Castiel gives the appearance of being both infinitely patient and easily exasperated. He rolls his shoulders and Dean's reminded of those massive wings stretching to the edges of his vision. "I told you," he said, something in his voice hinting that this isn't the first time he's had to explain this, "I'm an angel of the Lord." 

Dean can't help it. He laughs. 

"No such thing," he says around his chuckles. "And even if there were...no offense buddy, but you? You look like some kind of bad tax accountant Constantine cosplay wannabe." 

Castiel's eyes narrow. No sound travels through the air, yet a thunderclap shivers across Dean's nerves all the same. "All this time, and still, you have no faith." 

"I've got faith," Dean blusters. He fights the urge to take a step backwards. "Faith that the Chiefs are really going to make the playoffs this round, faith that _this_ lottery ticket is going to be the one that makes me a millionaire. But faith in angels?" He laughs, not without bitterness. "Yeah right." 

"Is it so hard for you to believe?" This time when Castiel steps forward, Dean's feet take a shuffle backward. "From the moment your lungs opened, you have lived a blessed life, Dean Winchester. Never have you made a move that wasn't guarded, never have you come to harm." 

"That's just...That's just luck," Dean tries weakly. "Lots of people live their lives without anything bad happening to them." 

He knows that's not true. Bad things happen all the fucking time, to people who don't deserve it. Bobby's wife passed away with no warning. Benny's girlfriend turned out to be deep into a smuggling ring and almost brought him down with her. Victor's on Marriage #4 and this one looks like it's about to go the same way as all the others. Garth is in a near constant battle with his fiancee's family and Dean doesn't even ask about Charlie's past because he has a feeling that it's so damn depressing it would send him away sobbing. Bad things happen all the fucking time--just not to the Winchesters. 

"Dean." Castiel's voice has softened again, as he speaks to Dean like he's something fragile. "Good things do happen, but not to this extent. Your every step has been protected, your every move promised." 

"I didn't ask for it!" Dean tries. He knows, in his rational mind, that anger isn't the appropriate response, but he also can't shake the feeling that there's some kind of reckoning here. Castiel is right--there were dozens of times when he should have been hurt. There were hundreds of opportunities. And he just...walked through them, as calm as Daniel in the lion's pit. Except that asshole knew what he was getting himself into, and Dean is just now figuring out that he might have unwittingly signed a contract with hidden fees. 

Castiel sighs. "This is wrong." He sounds hopeless. He even looks towards the skies, where dozens of stars twinkle above. "I should--Please. It'll just be easier if you let me--" He reaches towards Dean, two fingers at the ready, but Dean shies away. 

"No way man. You're not putting whatever Jedi mind-whammy on me again. No way." 

Dean can tell that Castiel is biting back an undoubtedly scathing remark. He doesn't really care. 

"Besides," he goes so far as to add, "it didn't seem to work all that well the last time." 

He expects anger, indignation, a good, healthy heaping of scorn. What he doesn't expect is the furtive guilt which flashes across Castiel's face. 

"It was on purpose," Dean says, beginning to put some of the puzzle together. "It didn't take because you didn't want it to. You...you wanted me to remember?"

Castiel's jaw sets as he looks pointedly away from Dean. 

There are too many questions here. Every time Dean has one answered, another three questions rise to take its place. He can't keep up. And when he's in doubt, he has one resort that he goes to. 

"I need a beer," he announces. "Maybe a burger. Definitely a beer."

\---

They end up at the Roadhouse, because why not? Angel of the Lord, seedy bar? What's not to love? 

An angel in his front seat. Now there's a sight to see. 

Castiel had put his hand out with intent, but startled to a stop at Dean's exclamation. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! No dice there, whatever you're trying to do." 

Frustration was evident in the squint of Castiel's eyes. "It would be shorter if I--"

"Hell no." Dean doesn't know where that sentence is going to end up, but it's certainly nowhere good. He points between him and Castiel and then towards his baby. "We're driving." 

Surprisingly, Castiel hadn't put up that much of a fight. He'd nodded once, shortly, then stalked off to the car. It had taken Dean a moment to catch up, but when he had, he'd walked up on a strange sight--Castiel running his hand over the Impala's frame like he was greeting a long-lost pet. There even looked to be the hint of a smile as he ran his fingers over the contours of her hood. He looked softer, more human. 

"Am I interrupting something?" Dean asked, hoping that the gruffness of his voice hid the bizarre little flash of jealousy burning in his belly. Absurd. 

"Of course not." Castiel's hand fell away from the Impala. Within the span of a second, he was his normal, rigid self. The drive had been spent in a brittle silence, a silence which hasn't abated when they walk into the Roadhouse. 

"Welcome," Dean says, throwing his arm wide to span the shabbiness that is the Roadhouse. The vinyl booths are cracking, the bar stools are mismatched and most of them wobble where one leg is shorter than the other. There's a fine patina of peanut shells on the ground and the bar is always suspiciously sticky. The bathrooms are iffy and at least one light is out on any given night. Dean loves it. 

"Dean Winchester. Been too damn long since you were here." 

Dean grins at the sound of Ellen's voice. It was Jo who introduced them and Ellen had quickly taken him on as a sort of bastard son. She's already headed his way from behind the bar. a wicked smile on her face. "Thought that those bastards took all your money and that's why you haven't been round here." She wraps him up in a quick, almost violent hug. "Who's your friend?"

Dean turns to Castiel to make an introduction, but he stops at the look on Castiel's face. Castiel looks...He looks the most vulnerable that Dean's ever seen him. His eyes are wide and shining, mouth dropped open in a small 'o' of surprise. If Dean had to put a name to the expression, he would call it yearning, but that's not quite right. It's like Castiel saw a ghost, only to find that they were alive and in the flesh. 

Ellen's not stupid; she notices the look. "You all right there slugger?" she asks, quirking an eyebrow upwards. 

Castiel gets a grip on himself. His mask slides back on, impassive and marble, except now, Dean thinks that he can see the fine cracks around the edges. Castiel feels things. No person who didn't could make that face. 

"Fine, thank you. Steven. Steve. Nice to meet you." 

Dean blinks at Castiel, but doesn't say anything until Ellen leads them to a corner booth. She leaves them alone with a menu after taking their drink orders, but not without a look towards Dean--_Is this guy for real?_ Dean tries as best he can, without words, to tell her that he doesn't think there's any harm in Castiel. 

He waits until Ellen's out of earshot before he turns to Castiel. "Steve?" he asks, condensation dripping from his voice. "Of all the names in the world to come up with, and you pick _Steve_?" 

"I don't see what the problem is," Castiel says. He flips a page of the menu. "You find Captain America an admirable superhero. Also, the less she knows, the safer she is. My presence..." Castiel looks over at Ellen. She's at the taps, pulling their drinks. Her face is set in concentration, but it breaks when Bill, her husband, pops his head out of the kitchen to speak to her. A smile spreads over her face as he drops a swift kiss to her cheek. 

Castiel watches the whole scene and there's such a bittersweet happiness on his face that Dean feels compelled to ask, "Do you like...have a _thing_ for her? She's married." 

Castiel's eyes fix on him. "The less humans who are aware of my presence the better. I don't...Ellen Harvelle is a good woman. I don't wish for her to be harmed just for the crime of knowing me." 

There's more to the story, Dean knows it. He also knows that the more he pushes, the less Castiel tells him. He has to approach this carefully if he wants any answers at all. 

He waits until Ellen brings out their burgers. They're steaming, with tiny puddles of grease forming underneath the patties. Castiel pokes around the edges of his, while Dean takes an enormous bite. "Spill," he says around a mouthful of food. When Castiel cocks his head curiously, Dean says it again, this time without the food. "Spill." He gestures towards Castiel. "The truth. I bought you beer, I bought you a burger, now tell me why three psychos broke into my house and tried to kill my girlfriend and my kid." 

For a moment, Dean thinks that Castiel is going to refuse. That he's just going to wing off to wherever he came from and leave him with the check and no way of getting in touch with him. Then Castiel's face does a strange sort of crumpling, and he answers, "They were looking for me." 

Dean holds his hand up. "All right. You're going to have to start at the beginning. Back it up and assume that I'm _not_ a person who knows the ins and outs of your freaky world." 

Castiel takes in a deep breath and then another. "The beginning." He looks at Dean and though he never blinks, Dean's reminded of when Ben was sifting through the facts as he determined what would make the best, most favorable story. 

"The people who invaded your house were angels. They were looking for me because they were angry that I had taken a special interest in you." 

Dean wants to interrupt--_Why me?_ He's nothing special--halfway decent grades through high school, halfway decent athlete, halfway decent mechanic, apparently a less than halfway decent boyfriend. If he were competing in the Mediocre Olympics, he might come in somewhere near the middle. Why would something like Castiel, a being with more power in his pinky finger than Dean could even dream of, take an interest in him? The question crashes into his skull, but Dean holds his tongue. He doesn't want to interrupt Castiel just when he's started talking. 

"They thought that by hurting you, they might be able to draw me out." Castiel's eyes flick to Dean's face, then back to the table. "They were correct. I didn't think they would kill you but...I couldn't take that chance." 

Dean can't hold it in anymore. "But why...I mean, I'm just some grease monkey. I'm not even the best at that. Why...angels? Why _me_?" 

Castiel blinks at him, his head tilting once more. "You don't..." He begins, wonder in his voice. "Oh Dean. You're much more than just a simple mechanic." 

Dean scoffs. "Try telling that to literally anyone who's ever met me." Even Mom and Dad--they love him, of course, but their pride was always saved for Sam, as it rightfully should be. Dean knows which one of the Winchester brothers is the true gold and which one is the cheap imitation. 

"They're just humans. Trust me when I say that you are more important to this world than you know. The angels believe..." Castiel's eyes flick around the room before they settle back on Dean. "Hester and her comrades believed that you had a special mission to perform. So did the woman from your childhood." Castiel pauses for the briefest moment. "She was a demon." 

"Hold up." Dean holds out a hand. "Maybe you were confused when I said 'Start at the beginning'? You might want to start with, oh, I don't know? The idea that there are angels and demons? Multiples of each? And apparently, they're deluded into thinking that I'm...I don't even know, some kind of hero?" 

"They believe in the _plan_," Cas says, like Dean should understand what that means. "And their plan hinges not so much on who you are, but what you are. What they can shape you into and make you. Both sides believe that you should be more, both sides are--" Castiel stops. It's in his imagination, but Dean almost fancies that he can hear the click of his teeth snapping together. 

"Castiel. Cas." Castiel does his flinch again, like Dean just reached out and struck him, but this time Dean doesn't relent. "What aren't you telling me?" 

Castiel looks up, jaw set. "The more that you know--"

Dean just barely manages to stop himself from flipping the table. As is, he slams his palm onto the surface, loud enough that he gets a sharp look from Ellen. He shakes his head at her--_Everything's fine_\--and turns the full ferocity of his irritation onto Castiel. "I am so goddamn sick of that excuse. _The more you know, the more danger you're in_." He deepens his voice in a poor imitation of Castiel's harsh growl. "In case you hadn't noticed," Dean hisses, "I'm already in danger. They came to my house! They almost..." The words stick in his throat. It's still too close, to remember the exact shade of white that Ben's face had turned. "You say that it's to keep me out of trouble, but I think that you're just using it as a cop-out." 

Dean knows that he's hit the nail on the head when Castiel's eyes slide somewhere to the right of his shoulder. He might be a stone-cold badass, but it turns out Castiel has more tells than a first-time gambler. 

"That woman, Hester--she said that this was all your fault. That you'd done something." Dean leaves the question unsaid, but it for all that, it looms over them all the larger. 

Castiel keeps his gaze fixed on a point just beyond Dean. Even in the dim lighting of the Roadhouse, Dean still catches the nervous bob of his throat. "You wouldn't understand," Castiel says, voice barely above a whisper. 

Dean has the feeling that he's hovering on the edge of a precipice. Somehow he knows that the words spoken in the next minutes will have the power to change his life. Part of him wants to run, but the bigger part, the one that's never backed down from a dare, the one that doesn't know when to quit, that pushes the odometer until it trips over into the red--that part stays. 

"Try me," he says, just as quietly. 

Castiel drags his eyes over to Dean. It looks like it takes enormous effort to do so. 

"There was...there was a fight. Where I'm from. It was a..." Castiel's eyes close but not before Dean catches a glimpse of the naked pain on his face. "It ended in victory, but I...I lost...I lost everything," Castiel finishes. His voice is almost lost amongst the rest of the noise in the Roadhouse. "I couldn't...I couldn't stay there anymore, in the ruins of what was left. So I left and came here because I thought...Maybe I could do better. Be better." 

"Balance the scales," Dean parrots, remembering what Castiel had said earlier that night. 

Castiel's eyes cut to him, surprise gleaming in the whites. Like he hadn't expected Dean to pay attention to what he said. "In a sense." Amazingly, a faint smile ghosts around his lips. "I wanted a chance to make things right." 

_What happened?_ The question lurks on Dean's lips but he never allows it to escape. Castiel wears the pain of his past like other people wear scars. Dean can see the way that it settles over him. It hangs in the corners of his mouth and in his eyes. It's present in the shift of his fingers and the pauses before he answers. Dean wants to know what happened to send Castiel reeling into his life, yet at the same time, he's very certain that he doesn't. 

"And you thought that being my guardian angel was going to do that?"

Castiel's face softens as he looks at Dean, really looks at him. It's not the thirty second glance that most people give him where they clock his facial features and then move on their way. It's not even the minute long look when someone decides that they like the particular way that his face is put together. This is a look that lasts for decades and still has more to give. Castiel looks at him like he wants to give each of Dean's freckles a name, like he's familiarizing himself with the atoms that make up his existence. A man could get addicted to a look like that, which is why Dean coughs and rubs at the bridge of his nose, breaking the contact. 

Castiel's gaze drops to the table. "The myths about guardian angels were created by humans desperate to find comfort in their lives. Unfortunately, as you've seen, angels aren't the creatures of your stories. Angels are fierce. They're warriors of God--convinced of their righteousness and blind to anything else other than their mission."

"You're not like that. I mean...you're in a bar, drinking a beer. You're not..." Dean falters, unsure whether he should continue. There's a complicated sort of look wiggling on Castiel's face, and he's not sure whether it's because the admitted angel of the Lord feels insulted or complimented by his words. 

"It's been pointed out to me many times that I'm a poor excuse for an angel." Castiel says the words with just a hint of wryness in his voice, no self-pity. 

"Well, you're a better angel than those dicks. If they're what passes for angels, then fuck 'em. You're better off being like you are." 

Castiel's hands, which had been turning his bottle in careful, one-eighth turns, stall and stop. He looks towards the ceiling as a faraway smile settles around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. "And that's why," he murmurs, so softly that he might have been talking to himself. 

"That's why what?" Dean's suspicion is confirmed when Castiel glances back towards him, a furtive, guilty look in his eyes. 

There's a moment where Dean wonders if Castiel is going to lie to him, but that moment vanishes when Castiel's shoulders droop just slightly. "You asked why you. Why an angel would take an interest in you."

This conversation is veering dangerously towards chick-flick territory, which is just a weird fucking thing to think about, and it's time to bring it to a halt. "Yeah, you told me." Dean sips his beer, wincing at the aftertaste. Warm beer is never a good thing. "You said that I have some super special destiny, or whatever."

"That is why _they_ were interested in you." Even if Castiel hadn't put that emphasis on the 'they', the weight of his gaze would leave no doubt in Dean's mind. "That's not what interests me. Your concern, your compassion, your kindness..." Castiel rolls his eyes for the shortest of moments. "Even your recklessness and impiety...That is why I am interested in you. You might believe that you're just like everyone else, but I've seen the majority of what humanity has to offer and you, Dean Winchester--you stand out from the rest. If you were placed in the middle of a dark room, you would still find a way to be known." 

"Slow down." Dean laughs, a hysterical edge bleeding through the sound, and sits back in his seat. He tries to swallow back his fear and automatic withdrawl at Cas' words, but his mouth has gone dry. "Normally people don't talk like that until at least the third date."

He'd meant the words as a joke, a way to create some level of distance between himself and Castiel. He didn't intend for Castiel's eyes to shutter and his lips to press in a firm, thin line. 

Right. Angels, even aesthetically pleasing ones, probably aren't into the concept of closeted bi dudes. Probably a big no-no in the celestial rulebook on that one. Oh well. His loss. 

Out of spite, Dean lets his eyes linger a little more on the sharp cut of Castiel's jawline. Castiel doesn't seem to notice; his gaze fixed once again somewhere in the middle distance. "If that was all you needed," he says, staring determinedly past Dean. He starts to slide out of the booth. 

"Whoa, hey, no way!" Dean doesn't realize that he's caught the cuff of Castiel's coat until he's tugging on it. Castiel affixes him with his laser-intensity stare, but Dean refuses to let go. "You still haven't--What the hell am I supposed to _do_?" he asks helplessly. 

Angels and demons exist. Angels and demons think that he's some sort of...whatever, Cas wasn't clear on that part. But somewhere along the way, angels decided that Dean Winchester was important enough to be their little hero and Castiel decided that Dean Winchester was important enough to save. The angels came to his house and attacked his family because they thought that doing so would lure Castiel out into the open. They wanted to lure Castiel into the open because they blame him for...For what, Dean's not sure, but he saw first-hand the depths of their rage. Castiel changed _something_ because he wanted the world to be better. He wanted a chance to make things right. 

And knowing all of this...Dean's world is adrift. What he's supposed to do with this knowledge...What is he _supposed_ to do? Take over his destiny? Castiel seems to think that's a bad idea, but should he trust the person who admittedly set all of this into motion? His intentions seem pure, but isn't there a proverb about where good intentions lead? 

Castiel stands. He gently pulls his coat cuff out of Dean's hands. He stands at a distance: if Dean wanted to stretch forward he could touch Castiel, but there's something in his face that tells Dean that would be a bad idea. 

"What are you supposed to do? You live your life, Dean Winchester." Castiel's face is hidden in the low light of the Roadhouse, and, like a coward, Dean is glad. If his face matched the dejection of that voice...Dean doesn't think that he could survive it. "You laugh, and you cry, and you drink beer, and you fix cars, and you cherish your loved ones. You live a long, full life."

Something in Dean's heart stutters at the blatant _yearning_ in Castiel's voice. He would have thought--from what he's seen of Castiel, he's bordering on all-powerful--Dude can pop in and out of places at will, he threatens demons, he kills angels...But when he said _a long full life_, there was something there. "And you?" Dean asks. 

Castiel shifts. A slice of light falls across his face, enough so that Dean can see the faint shadow of a smile ghost across his face. It's heartbreaking. "I will do as I've always done." 

Cas leans back, looks like he's going to leave, but then pauses. In the space of a moment, a war is waged in his eyes, and then, he's moving. He steps forward, into Dean's space, so close that a small part of Dean's brain (the one that automatically cries _No Homo!_ whenever Benny hugs him just a second too long) wants to snark, _Personal space much?_ That part of his brain is ruthlessly smothered by Castiel's hand, the one that rests lightly on his cheek. Castiel's thumb rests on the skin just underneath Dean's eyes and Dean...He never understood the expression 'his breath caught in his throat', but now he does. He chokes on his breath, a strangled, surprised noise burbling out his mouth. Castiel stares at him, stares _through_ him, blue eyes intense on his face. No one's ever looked at him like that before, not even Lisa--like they want to find out everything that makes him tick, like Dean is someone important, someone worth knowing. 

Castiel smiles again, achingly sad, to the point where it hurts Dean to see it. "Goodbye Dean," Castiel murmurs. There's the slightest hint of pressure against his cheek and Dean leans into it, sure that something is going to happen, something--

The hand on his cheek disappears. Dean's eyes fly open to see the tail of Castiel's coat whipping around the corner of the booth. He's frozen for a moment, before he launches to his feet. "Castiel!" he shouts, his voice lost in the roar of the jukebox. "Cas!" 

He skids around the corner, intent on finding Castiel. He doesn't know what he's going to say, but he does know that he can't leave it like this, this whole conversation racing, Thelma and Louise style, into a cliffhanger. Dozens of possibilities hang in the air, dozens of futures, when he finds Castiel...He rounds the corner and nothing. 

Castiel is gone. 

\----

So Dean does what Castiel said: he returns to his life. He lives it as best he can. He apologizes to the workers at the garage and takes them out for drinks one night. The bill is astronomical (his friends have a little bit of a mean streak in them), but it's good to remember that he loves these people, that these people have supported him throughout his life. He goes to his parents' house for dinner and his mother shoves food in front of his face and his father shares a beer with him and Dean pretends that he doesn't see the worried looks they shoot each other over the top of his head when they think he's not paying attention. He spends a Saturday with Sam and Jess and tries to shake off the feeling that he's third wheeling their entire life. For once, Sam doesn't push. He just looks at Dean out the corner of his eye, quiet and considering. There's something there, hidden in his gaze, but, glad for the reprieve, Dean doesn't push either. 

Lisa calls and tells him that she's found a job in the town where her sister lives. She tells him that Ben misses him, but he's enrolled in school there and he's trying out for the baseball team in the spring. She tells him that she's hiring a moving company to come and pick up the rest of her belongings that she left. 

From the second that Dean saw Lisa get into her car, he knew that she wasn't coming back, but it still hurts. 

After he hangs up his phone he pours himself a drink. He sits down on the couch that he and Lisa spent an afternoon bickering over (she won) and forces himself to take small sips of his whiskey. He'll have to pack up the last of Lisa's and Ben's things this weekend. It's some furniture, some clothes, some knick-knacks that weren't deemed important enough to make the first move. He'll have to finish going through their drawers and complete the eviction of Lisa from his bedroom. 

He knew that she wasn't coming back, but it still...It still hurts. 

Dean takes a large sip, wincing at the burn. When he's done with that drink, he pours himself another. He drinks that one, a little less slowly than the first. When that one's done, he sucks his teeth, trying to push away the dull ache in his chest. 

He put Castiel out of his mind and for the past week, he's been courteous enough to stay there. Angels, demons, destinies...That's not the life he's leading. That's not the life he wants to lead. He wants to be Dean Winchester, mechanic, occasional LARPer, and second-favorite son. For the most part, that's what he's settled into. But there's something else, the grain of sand against his skin, the pea in his mattress that means that he can't ever just relax. 

Maybe it's the two drinks. Maybe it's the knowledge that whatever he and Lisa had, it ended the second that the angels entered their home. Maybe it's the knowledge that he's alone in a world that's much bigger than he ever dreamed. Whatever it is, Dean glances up towards the ceiling. 

"Hey Castiel." He considers for a moment. "Hey Cas." The nickname comes easily, like it was waiting to be acknowledged. "I just...Just saying hey man. I assume that you're still alive. Still watching." He glances around the room, like maybe Cas is lurking behind the sofa. No such luck. "I just uh...Look man, this is fucking weird, all right? I just wanted to say that I hope everything's ok. And if you ever wanted to pop in sometime, just to talk...that would be ok. If up there is anything like it is down here, it uh...It must get lonely. So you know. If you ever want to, I don't know, have a beer? Do angels drink? Whatever. We can have a beer, talk? I don't know what we'd talk about; I must be pretty boring compared to what you're used to." Dean realizes that he's rambling. He only manages to stop himself by digging his teeth into his lower lip. "So, uh, yeah man. If you get bored, you know where to find me." 

He sends another surreptitious look around the room. He halfway expects to hear that strange flutter that he realizes presages Castiel's entrance, but after a few moments of holding his breath, the only sounds in the room are that of the wind outside and the faint noise of the highway in the distance. 

"Stupid fucking idea," Dean mutters, before he goes to pour himself another drink. 

\---

Life continues. The movers come and take Lisa's stuff and Dean pours himself another drink that night before he passes out on the couch watching reruns of Dr. Sexy. He goes to work, tries to get the restoration side of the business up and off the ground. It's an uphill battle, but Dean almost relishes the late nights. At least then he has an excuse for why he's tired and irritable other than he can't sleep. 

Even though he knows it's an exercise in futility, he can't stop himself looking for Castiel. Sometimes he thinks that he gets glimpses of him. He'll be walking through a crowd and someone will catch his eye. He'll whip around, convinced that he's going to see him, but...Nothing. It's always someone who doesn't look a damn thing like him, or, better yet, it's nothing at all. 

\---

Worse than his pining _maybe it's you but no it's not_ looks are the conversations. 

Well. You can't call it a conversation if it's one-sided. 

Which is ridiculously pathetic, but Dean's willing to ignore that. Otherwise, he'll just realize that he's a single, thirty year old man sitting alone in his living room, talking to a self-professed angel that never shows up. 

He never mentions anything earth-shattering to Castiel--difficult customers, something funny that Jo said, his predictions on when Jess is going to ask Sam to marry her, since he doubts that Sam will ever nut up enough to make an honest woman out of her. They're mundane, boring details, and after sharing, he thinks that he can understand why Castiel isn't answering. Hell, sometimes, the monotony of his life is enough to put him to sleep, let alone someone like Castiel. 

"Anyway, sorry to bother you," Dean finishes one night. He picks at the edge of the label of his beer bottle, peeling it off in small increments. "I guess you're busy doing...whatever it is that you're doing. I know that you've got more important things to do than talk to me; I just thought I would...say hi. Hope that you're doing all right man." 

At this point, he's not expecting any kind of response. Talking to Castiel is akin to shouting into the void, except the void might give a little more of a reaction. Dean sighs, finishes picking off the label of the bottle and rolling it between his fingers. He gets ready to get up when he feels it--a soft brush of wind through the room. The curtains stir and a few papers on the couch rustle. Dean's eyes close as the breeze sweeps by his face and arms. It teases at his skin, at his cheeks, at his lips. If Dean closes his eyes, then he could almost believe that it's fingertips tracing over his face, raising the hair on his arms and the back of his neck. 

Caught in the moment, Dean's eyes flutter closed. He drinks in the sensation. If he tries, then he can smell the fresh scent of rain, the smell of the ocean wafting through his small living room. "Cas," he breathes, remembering the flap of the angel's coat, the hypnotic gleam of his eyes, the way that his hair had stuck up in the back like someone had just finished running their fingers through it. The heat of his gaze, the way that he'd managed to parse Dean down to his basest parts with nothing more than a simple look. "Cas," he says again, fingertips aching for touch, for the warm press of flesh--

The breeze abruptly disappears, leaving Dean's living room still, stale, and so very empty. 

Dean opens his eyes to find everything exactly as it was. Not even the papers on the couch are disturbed. 

\---

After that, the dreams pick up. 

Dean's no stranger to these type of dreams--the super fun ones that involve sweat and slick and moans. Dean likes those dreams, but these are different than any others that he's ever had. The person starring in these dreams has dark hair and sparkling blue eyes and a smile that could light up the world. That gravely voice makes an appearance, though in a different register than Dean's ever heard it. That voice whispers _Dean_, so soft and sweet that Dean can almost make himself believe in the love, believe in the pure _joy_ of that voice. He arches into the touch of those hands, so sure and competent, as they map out the contours of his body. Fire licks along his skin and Dean gives himself over to those hands, those eyes, that voice, that mouth--_Cas_, he groans, low and desperate, arching his back. 

_I've got you_, Cas says back, lips tracing over his forehead, his cheeks, his chin, before finally taking his mouth in a brutal kiss. _Let it go Dean, I've got you._

Sobbing, Dean does. 

When Dean wakes from the dreams, he does so with guilt heavy in the pit of his stomach. His hard, sweat-soaked body screams for release, but he doesn't dare touch himself; certain that if he does either his hand or his dick will fall off. Beating off to the thought of a male angel? That's got to be a one-way ticket to Hell. 

The guilt and the shame don't stop the dreams though. 

\---

Sam's birthday rolls around. While Dean would rather spend the evening shoving bamboo shoots underneath his fingernails, Jess is insistent that Sam's celebration be held at one of Lawrence's newest clubs. It's downtown, which means that parking will be a bitch and a half to find, and he runs the risk of someone denting or scraping up against his baby. Not to mention that clubs are loud, smelly, and packed with crappy dancers and crappier music. 

Fuck. Dean was hoping that he would be at least fifty before he got that kind of mentality. 

Still, it's Sam's 26th birthday, which isn't really a big deal, but Jess treats it like it is. Everyone's invited--the crew from the garage, some of Sam's weird lawyer friends. Sam's college friend Brady will be there, specially delivered from California. When Dean hears that, he fights against the involuntary shudder. He's only met him once at Sam's graduation, but Brady made a definite impression. He's the worst kind of stereotypical lawyer, slimy and oozing superficial charm. When he shakes Dean's hand, he has to fight to refrain from wiping his palm against his jeans. Worse still, is the way that he hangs off of Sam--Like Sam is some kind of weird fraternity leader and Brady's his sworn second-hand man. Dean didn't think that those types existed outside of bad B-action movies, but then there's Brady, here to prove him wrong. 

Dean says hello to everyone and goes to take a seat at the bar. The bartender is too busy for conversation, but she appreciates his wink and keeps his glass full. In another world, she looks like the type of girl that he would make a concentrated effort for. Now...He smiles and he flirts, but it feels empty. Obligatory. 

Jess comes over halfway through the night, her eyes glassy and smile wide. Her blonde hair is frizzy and sweat-damp at her temples. "Hey grouchy," she greets, sliding onto the bar stool next to him. "You ever planning on getting your ass off that stool?" 

"Does that mean that I'll have to dance?" Jess' wide smile is answer enough. "Then I'll pass. I wouldn't want to scare away any potential catches for Charlie." 

That's a fucking lie--Charlie has _never_ needed his help or feared his interference. Mostly, it's that Dean's really not in the fucking mood to be social tonight. Sitting at the bar and paying a small fortune for drinks seems like a much better idea. 

"Come on," Jess urges, tugging at his wrist. "We miss you." 

And damn it all if his future sister-in-law doesn't know how to put the knife in and twist. Guilt is the best motivator for Dean Winchester. Jess might not have meant to use it but she did, and now Dean feels like a Grade-A asshole for sulking at the bar. 

"Yeah, yeah. I need to take a piss and then I'll be right there to Footloose it up." Dean slides off the stool and it's only then that all of those drinks hit him. The dance floor wavers and the strobing lights sure as hell don't make his journey any easier. By the time he makes it to the relative calm of the bathroom, his vision is swimming and his head is throbbing. The bright white tiles are a stark contrast to the dark dance floor, but the sound is muted and there aren't any flashing lights, which is a sweet relief. 

Dean fights the urge to lean his head against the cool wall as he pisses. Who knows how many other drunk heads have been on that wall? He zips up and takes his time moving to the sink, dreading the moment when he has to leave from the bathroom. Gathering his strength, he lowers his head to splash water on his face. "Ok," he murmurs into his palms. It takes him an eternity to straighten and look at his reflection in the mirror. When he does, he yelps and jerks backward. 

Castiel's reflection stares back at him. 

Heart pounding, Dean whirls around to look at the angel. Castiel quirks an eyebrow upward. If Dean didn't know any better, then he would say that the son of a bitch is amused at his minor heart attack. "Jesus Christ," Dean wheezes, then balks at his blasphemy. His worry is useless; if Castiel cares then he surely doesn't show it. 

Castiel's eyes look him over (Jesus Christ, this asshole is actually giving him elevator eyes, a slow drag up and down his body that makes Dean hot and itchy in all the wrong/right places) before returning to his face. From the small divot between his brows, he's not happy with what he finds. 

"You're intoxicated." 

"Yeah, you know what, _Mom_," Dean sneers, feeling peevish and ashamed, "last I looked, I didn't need your permission to do what I wanted." 

Castiel's lips press into a thin, almost invisible line. "Of course not."

"The hell are you doing here anyway? Come to say Happy Birthday to Sammy?"

_Why the fuck are you here now after ignoring me_ is what Dean _wants_ to say, but that sounds a little too clingy and desperate, even for his drunk brain. 

"Sam's natality celebrations are partly the reason I'm here, yes." 

Dean blinks as he accesses his not inconsiderable vocabulary to interpret Castiel's words. "Seriously?" he finally asks. "You bring him a gift?"

Castiel blinks at him. Dean's never known a person who could say so much in a simple lowering of their eyelids. The simple act leaves Dean feeling wrong-footed and stupid, and very, very drunk. He's conscious then, of damp spots at the pits and back of his shirt, as well as the fact that he's practically sweating whiskey at this point. 

"You need to leave," Castiel says, looking towards the door. 

"Um...no? It's Sam's birthday party? I've already been enough of a dick tonight; I need to go socialize." 

"Dean." Castiel takes a step forward. His clean scent, fresh rain and forests, overwhelms the urinal cake scent of the bathroom, and Dean has to fight the urge to lean closer and breathe him in. "You must leave this place. It's not safe." 

Dean blinks stupidly as he pulls back from Castiel and looks around at the white tile and the bathroom countertop trying so hard to be classy. "Who's going to attack me in a bathroom?" 

Castiel actually rolls his eyes. Not a swift, exasperated movement either, oh no, this is a motion so huge that Dean sees the whites of his eyes for a good two seconds, the kind of roll that makes your eyes ache in their sockets. He would almost be impressed at causing that reaction, if he weren't so confused and if the beginnings of fear weren't beginning to tug at his stomach. 

"We don't have time for this." Dean's either drunker than he thought, or Castiel moves a hell of a lot faster than he remembers, because he doesn't even have the time to blink before the angel is in his personal space (_again_), and pushing his index and middle fingers _hard_ into Dean's forehead. Dean staggers backward from the force of the shove. He flails, expecting to catch himself on a wall, a divider, or _gross_ a urinal, but instead, his hand hits a solid, brick wall. 

He blinks as he looks around. 

The scent of stale trash, the flickering glow of a streetlamp, the faint sounds of traffic, the muffled pulse of music, the whisper of a breeze in the air. He's outside. When did he get outside? How? 

Castiel shifts. The streetlight falls on his face and turns it into something forbidding, something inhuman. 

Castiel is an angel. Dean didn't understand the ramifications of that until just this moment. 

"You and your brother are in danger. You need to leave here immediately."

"Wait...Sam? What...why is _he_ in danger? I thought that these asshats were only after me?"

A pained look crosses Castiel's face. "The angels are interested in you. A...different group of individuals have set their sights on Sam." At Dean's flabbergasted look, Castiel explains, though the look on his face suggests that he would rather do anything but. "Demons. For the same reason that the angels are interested in you, demons are interested in Sam." 

The words hit Dean with the force of a sledgehammer, right in the chest. "Demons?" he asks, like Castiel's answer will change if he wants it hard enough. "There are demons after Sammy?"

He's seen the wrath of angels; he's experienced their unique brand of righteousness. But hearing that demons are after his baby brother, Dean's suddenly eight years old again, terrified, with his hand clamped in that woman's grasp. Black eyes shining at him, rotten eggs in his nose, skin crawling...

"Dean. Dean!" Hands on either side of his face force his head stationary and it's only then that Dean realizes that he's been shaking his head in denial. His eyes dart side to side, desperate to find an escape, but Castiel holds him still and forces Dean's eyes to his. "Dean, I'm going to help your brother. I'm going to fix this, fix all of it, but you have to go. You have to get as far away from here as you can."

"Fuck that, that's my brother in there, Jess, Charlie, Jo, Benny--fuck you if you think that I'm going to leave them. No, you have to let me--I need to get them--"

Castiel's fingers are steel beams holding him prisoner. Dean tries to wrench away, but he's pinned, stuck. All he can do is look into Castiel's face, the bright blue eyes that look like they can see straight through all of his bullshit and into the skittering fear threatening to break through. 

"Look at me Dean." Dean's eyes jerk to the side in an automatic reaction, but Castiel manages to recapture his attention. "I will get Sam out and your friends will be safe, but I can't do any of that if I'm worried about you. Please Dean. I need you to trust me." 

Castiel's face is open and earnest, concern plain in the wrinkle of his forehead and his unwavering gaze. Dean nods, his heart pounding. Trust--he trusts Castiel. He trusts Castiel to keep him safe, to keep his friends safe, to keep _Sam_ safe. 

Something loosens in Castiel, a weight lifted from his shoulders. Dean watches it happen, watches how Castiel's whole posture changes and a light sparks in the depths of his eyes. "Thank you," Castiel says, fingertips pressing into Dean's skin, so hard that it almost hurts. "Thank you." 

They're standing so closely together that Dean thinks that maybe, _something_, might happen, but then Castiel pulls away. It's a swift, almost violent movement and Castiel's sudden absence leaves Dean feeling cold and bereft. "Go home," Castiel tells Dean. "When it's over, I'll come to you." 

He turns away and Dean can't...His brother and his friends and whatever weird thing he feels with Castiel pushing at his chest, and he _can't_...

"Cas!" he calls, and lunges forward the few steps that it takes to put him inside Castiel's space. 

He can tell from Castiel's slight jerk backwards that he wasn't expecting this. For a moment, Castiel looks like he might pull away, but it passes in a split second. Castiel holds his ground, though there's still something uncertain in his eyes and bearing. "Dean, please--" he begins, but any further words are cut off by the swift, hard press of Dean's lips to his. 

It's not a particularly good kiss--Cas is frozen in place, so when Dean kisses him all he gets is a stiff as a board body. That is, until Cas softens and tilts his head, and then his lips are parting and taking Dean's lower lip in between his, his tongue sweeps out to tickle the swell of Dean's lip, his hands pull at Dean's elbow, and shoulder, and the back of his neck. Castiel kisses him with a thoroughness bordering on brutality. He kisses him until Dean's knees are wobbling and his brain has been wiped clean of every thought. 

It's only a few seconds, but it feels like a lifetime when Castiel finally releases him. Dean sucks in a deep breath, his eyes shutting in remembered bliss. He leans against the brick wall, a dazed smile spreading out over his face. For one, blessed moment, all he can think of is Cas--the soft grunts that fell from his throat, the hard tug of his fingers, the unyielding movements of his lips. 

Reality bursts back when Castiel says his name softly, reverently. "Dean."

He remembers then--Sam, Castiel's insistence that he's in danger, demons, angels, loneliness, unanswered talks--He straightens and looks at Castiel. The angel looks more ruffled than usual, his already-untidy hair even more rucked up and messy. He did that. He was the one to take this rock and make him soft. 

"I heard your prayers," Castiel tells him, still in that soft register. "Every time you spoke to me...I heard them." 

Warring emotions rip through Dean's chest but one emerges superior--Sam. Castiel needs to help Sam. 

"You go help my baby brother," he tells Castiel. "If he's in trouble--You help him and you help Charlie, and Jess, and the rest of them. You bring them home, you hear?" 

Castiel jerks his chin in a short acknowledgement. It's a cold gesture, business-like, and Dean can see his walls flying back up. Despite the urgency of the moment, the thought doesn't sit well with him that he's caused that marble mask to slip back over Castiel's features, so Dean does the only thing that he can think of. He steps back into Castiel's space, reaching out and taking his wrist. 

He would have thought that Cas would be hot to the touch, but his skin is cool. A pulse thumps steadily in his wrist, underneath the slender bones and supple tendons. It's so wonderfully human and yet so delightfully foreign. "Please," Dean asks, squeezing. "Please. It's my little brother. I can't...I need your help." 

"Of course," Castiel answers, but there's still something that Dean doesn't like in his answer, in his face. The shadows are lengthening over them, and Dean's treading on the edges of something that he doesn't fully understand. 

"Thank you," Dean says, swiping his thumb over Castiel's wrist. "Sam is...he's...thank you." The words are sad, paltry things that can never encompass what he feels, but they're all that he has to offer and Dean puts every ounce of emotion into them that he can. 

Castiel's mask slips then, just a little. The severe lines around his eyes smooth as he looks into Dean's eyes. "Go home," he says. "When it's over--I'll come to you." 

Then, with only the soft flutter of noise to foreshadow his departure, Castiel is gone. 

\---

It goes against every instinct in Dean's body to follow Castiel's orders, but he does. He gets into the Impala and drives home. He keeps the news station on the entire ride, terrified that he'll hear something about an occurrence downtown. He keeps his ears peeled for the sounds of disaster--wailing sirens, screams--but hears nothing. No flashing lights accompany his ride and Dean tells himself that everything is fine, that Sam is fine. Castiel is looking out for his little brother. Castiel will make sure that he's fine, the same way that he made sure that Lisa was fine, that Ben was fine, that Dean was fine. 

"Please Cas," Dean murmurs, hoping to soothe the anxious twist in his chest. "Please, please, please keep him safe." 

Once Dean makes it to his house he can't stand still. Every atom in his body vibrates with the need for action, for reassurance, for _something_. He goes upstairs and digs out his long-expired First Aid kit from underneath the bathroom sink. No doubt the medicine in it has long gone bad, but the bandages should still be good. He takes about three minutes placing it on the kitchen counter before he goes back to taking near constant turns of the living room. By the end of the night, he'll be surprised if he hasn't worn the outlying floor smooth. 

_Just another minute_, Dean tells himself as he peers out the window. _Just another minute_, as he glances at his phone. _Just another minute_, as he paces the length of his living room. _Just another minute_, as he looks downtown. _Just another minute_, until the minutes add up and fear sits heavy in Dean's throat. 

_Just another minute._

The seconds tick away and weigh upon him until he can't swallow past the taste of it, bitter-dry in his mouth. His heart is a restless thing, nervously pattering against his ribs and sternum, and his fingertips dance along his jawline, his throat, the hem of his shirt. He can't focus on any one thing--if he looks too long at the door, then the furniture starts to loom large in the corner of his eyes. If he tries to focus on the wood grain of the hardwood floor, then the walls start closing in on him. 

He can't breathe, can't move, except he can't stop moving, and his breath is coming hot and fast in the back of his throat and--

A soft, almost inaudible, flutter behind him. 

Dean whirls around, heart thundering hard in his chest. Standing in his living room, like they'd always been there, are Castiel and flustered looking Sam. 

"Oh thank fuck," Dean whispers. His knees go wobbly with relief as he takes in Sam--vaguely irritated, windblown, a faint smear of blood on his chin, but whole, wonderfully _whole_. "Thank god." 

Sam's eyes light on his. Anger and terror are reflected in equal parts in his expression. "Dean, what the fuck is going on?" he asks. Dean doesn't miss how quickly he moves to put distance between himself and Castiel. "What the--This, this..." Sam points a shaking finger at Castiel, who stands on the opposite side of Dean's living room and regards them with a seemingly calm exterior. "He killed Brady!" Sam shouts, lip curling upwards. 

Dean turns to Castiel aghast--sure, he didn't really like the guy, but did he deserve _death_?--only to find Castiel's eyes focused on him. Dean could spend days deciphering that expression and still be lost as to what it all means. He thinks that he sees a hint of fondness, longing, regret, pain--Dean manages to drag his eyes away from Castiel and focus back on Sam. 

"The hell do you mean--What did you do?" The last bit is directed to Castiel, but Sam doesn't seem to notice. 

"He just...I had just turned around to say something to Jess and when I turned back, he was just _there_ beside Brady--" Sam sags, his giant shoulders crumpling. "Oh god, Jess, where is she, is she still back there--" 

"Jessica Moore is safe," Castiel interrupts. No inflection breaks the smooth cadence of his voice. "She's with the rest of your friends and no harm will come to her." 

"You--" Sam is spitting furious, the kind of mad that he doesn't indulge in very often. He shoves an accusatory finger in Castiel's face. "Brady was my friend and you just fucking...You..." A convulsive movement shakes through Sam's body and he retches. "His fucking face Dean, his eyes...His eyes were burnt out of his skull--"

Dean looks at Castiel, desperate for an explanation, but Castiel just looks at Sam with his large, sad eyes in that impassive face. Sam, meanwhile, glares at Castiel with a vehemence bordering on hatred. "Brady was my _friend_ and he was dead before any of us could even...And then there were all of these guys there, and the smells...And this guy--" Sam looks lost. Dean can sympathize. 

"He was a demon." Castiel's low voice breaks through the quick sounds of Sam's shallow breathing. "The human Braden Lynch had been dead for at least several days. What you were talking with tonight was a demon that was possessing his corpse." 

"What the..." Sam laughs, disbelieving. He looks to Dean, to Castiel, then back to Dean. "Are you hearing this? Demons? Dean, what the fuck have you gotten us into?"

Dean can't answer. He's still stuck on the fact that Sam is here, in his house, alive, whole, and unharmed. Everything else...he'll deal with everything else when he gets to it. "Are we safe here?" he asks Castiel. 

Castiel's eyes flicker, but only for a moment. His shoulders square and he looks around the house. "All the demons who were in the club are dead. There was no one to spread word of what happened. I don't think that this was a concerted, organized effort; instead I think--"

Dean would love to hear what Castiel's thoughts are on the subject, but it's not to be. A faint howling sound starts outside the house. At first, it can be ignored, but after a few seconds the sound picks up until it's deafening. A high-pitched shriek races through his house as a wind tugs and rips at the walls, the furniture, and the occupants of the room. Pressure builds and builds, and Dean can't breathe, he can't--

"What the hell is happening?" Sam shouts. His eyes are squinted shut in pain and his hands are clamped over his ears as his mouth opens in a soundless scream of pain. Dean's heart shatters at the sight--his baby brother, the one that he promised to look after, the one who relied on him throughout school--He can't help him, can't stop his pain, can't promise that everything is going to be all right--

Dean's eyes fall on Castiel. Castiel, who's helped him through the years, Castiel who saved his life, Castiel who he trusts more than he trusts most people, Castiel who he kissed--Castiel will save him; he knows this--

Except Castiel stands in the middle of the room, the tails of his coat flapping in the wind. His hands are clenched at his side as he looks towards the sky. Sharp white light illuminates the unfamiliar look on his face, and Dean easily places it--fear. Whatever is happening, Castiel is afraid. 

"You need to leave!" Castiel shouts. He locks eyes with Dean. "Take Sam and go! I'll hold them off; I'll hold them all off!" The urgency in his eyes and voice is enough to spur Dean into motion. He grabs Sam's arm and starts to pull him towards the door. Sam stumbles after him, his steps faltering and clumsy. Light scorches through the room as the pitch in the howling rises, to the point where Dean wants to scream and add his own voice to the madness. 

Get Sam out, get him to safety, get him out--Dean spares one last look at Castiel, standing in the center of the room. There's so much between them that's unsaid, so much that Dean wanted to say, to do--The memory of their kiss still lingers, phantom pressure on his lips and skin, the tingling of possibility racing through his blood, but Castiel's eyes are telling him _Goodbye_, even as his mouth shouts, "Go Dean!" 

Dean turns around. He leaves Castiel and makes his way towards the door, except--

The pressure, which had been steadily rising, explodes in a single, cataclysmic burst that blows Dean and Sam away from the door. He hits the ground, hard, and lays there for a moment, dazed. Stars burst behind his eyelids, lights shatter, the howling rises and rises, and Dean screams until--

An unnatural hush falls upon the room. It's silent, deadly. It's the sound of a tomb, the sound that the dead make. The only sounds are that of Dean and Sam's ragged breaths as they force their bodies upright. 

"Cas," Dean slurs, terror mingling with the aftershocks of pain. "Cas, what the hell is--"

"Well, well, well," a new voice interrupts. 

Dean automatically hates that voice. It's unctuous, oily, slimy. It slides down his spine and leaves a trail like a slug. He could take a dozen showers and never wash that voice off. He blinks the spotlights out of his eyes and tries to focus. 

A man stands in the center of his living room in front of Cas. He's dressed in a high-end, tailored suit. Both his polished black shoes and his bald pate gleam in the dim lighting of the room. His movements are fastidious and fussy as he tugs at the hem of his suit jacket. Next to Cas' typical frumpiness, he looks suave, polished, dapper. Untrustworthy. 

"Imagine finding you here," the man says to Castiel, before taking a slow turn around the room. Dean automatically shrinks back, a long dormant instinct telling him to fear this man's gaze, but it's too late. His cold, dead eyes light on Dean and Sam, and a shark's smile spreads slowly across his face. "And imagine seeing you two. Dean. Sam." The man's eyes slide to both of them as he says their names. Something in Dean recoils. He wants nothing to do with this man. "Turns out that you two are pretty damn difficult to get in touch with. No thanks to your friend here." 

"Leave now Zachariah," Castiel says, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "Leave now before you suffer the same fate of your soldiers." 

"Oh, I don't think so," Zachariah sneers, tugging at the knot of his tie. "I think that I'm going to stay here and have a nice long chat with these boys. And you--" He flicks his fingers towards Castiel. 

Castiel--strong Castiel, the Castiel who managed to kill three angels, Castiel who slaughtered demons, who saved Dean's life countless times, Castiel who Dean trusts his brother's life to...Castiel flies across the room and crashes into the wall with a dull, sickening thud. He falls to the ground and remains still. Zachariah looks at his still body and smiles, before turning that same crocodile grin to the Winchesters. 

"Well, it's best that we don't have any interruptions." 

~*~*~*~


	4. the angel within me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What Castiel did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sensitive material (character death/references to suicide) that might not be for everyone. I've put more detailed notes at the end of the chapter (they're spoiler-y in nature), if you want to check it out. 
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy!

_The angel within me thrives on the devil within me.--Kedar Joshi_

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Dean never understood the phrase '_frozen in fear_' until this moment. 

The angel--he has to be an angel--surveys the damage he created. He looks around Dean's living room like his name is on the mortgage, even going so far as to run the tip of his finger along the fringe of one of the throw pillows. He spares a moment to look at Castiel, still crumpled on the ground where he was tossed, like an afterthought. 

"How rude of me," he says, after ignoring Dean and Sam for a good thirty seconds. "I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Zachariah." 

Next to him, Sam is vibrating--with fear, pain, or rage, Dean isn't sure. He pushes his shoulder into Sam's, probably not subtle, but he needs to stop his brother from doing anything stupid. 

He can see Castiel out the corner of his eye. He's not moving. _Move_, Dean thinks, hard enough that his skull hurts. _Please Cas. Please._

He's been in this situation before, in this same room, but even Hester and her compatriots didn't scare him half as much as this angel does. Perhaps it's because, for all of her hatred, Hester was at least recognizable as something approaching human. She had passions, emotions, belief. Zachariah is empty. When Dean looks into his eyes, it's like looking into a cool, dark lake. Only his face is reflected back at him. 

"You're not going to introduce yourselves?" Zachariah tsks and the sound is somehow both terrifying and sanctimonious. "It's fine; be rude. I already know who you are anyway." 

"Whoever you are, whatever's going on--We don't want any kind of trouble." Sam's voice hardly quivers at all, and Dean would be proud of him, if his assumption weren't so far from the truth. 

"Oh Sam. Much as it's screwed up my plans, I think I almost like your naivety. It's endearing. Like watching a moose stumble into traffic." Next to him, Sam sputters and not even a sharp elbow from Dean can stop the frustrated noises from escaping his throat. Zachariah rolls his eyes. "Oh, get over yourself. Lumbering thoughtlessly through life is only entertaining for so long. Then it's just annoying." 

"Who the hell do you--" Sam sounds like he's gearing up for a truly impressive rant or telling off, but a sharp gesture from Zachariah sends him to a sputtering halt. 

At first, Dean thinks that Sam might just be intimidated into silence. Exuding menace, Zachariah is honestly terrifying. But, as an empty, rattling wheeze escapes through Sam's throat, Dean realizes that there's something truly wrong. He watches, helpless, as Sam's face turns ashen, then flushes a bright scarlet. Sam's eyes bulge wide as his mouth opens in a series of frantic gasps. He's gulping in air, his chest heaving with the effort, but there's nothing, no sound, no...Sweat beads on Sam's forehead as his hands claw at his throat. His feet kick against the hardwood in a series of desperate spasms, and Dean's screaming, he's yelling, for Zachariah to stop, for someone to help, for his Mom, for Cas--

Zachariah snaps his fingers. Immediately, Sam gulps in a harsh, quick breath, then another, and another. Sam sags to the ground, shaking with the force of his gasps. Tears spring at the corners of his eyes as his hand clutches at the sleeve of Dean's shirt and Dean's never felt so useless in his whole goddamn life. 

"And that is just a _teensy_ taste of what happens when I don't get my way." Zachariah smiles, thin and mean like a papercut. Dean has never hated or feared anyone more. 

Some of his emotions must show on his face because Zachariah focuses in on him with laser-like intensity. "And you, you cockroach, you are going to be the first to get in line." 

Where he finds the confidence, Dean doesn't know, but he manages to sneer at the angel. "You just did some weird Jedi-mind trick on my little brother. If you think that I'm doing _anything_ that you want, then you're real fucking confused about who I am." 

Zachariah grins wider. It's horrifying. "You think that was bad? _Boy_, you don't know the half of it. You want to see how Sammy does without his lungs? Or with Stage 4 stomach cancer? You want to see how long he makes it without the bones in his lower half? Wonder how tall he's going to be when he doesn't have a femur." Sam makes a small, helpless noise. "You want more ideas? I've got them. I've had a hell of a long time to come up with all the different ways that I was going to take my frustrations out of your asses." 

"What...What did we even do?" Sam's voice comes as a thin wheeze. "I've never seen you before in my life--"

"Well of course you haven't Sam; you've had your little guardian angel perching over your shoulder, making sure that no one ever got the slightest whiff of you." 

Again, Dean's eyes are drawn to the still, crumpled form of Castiel on the floor. God, if Castiel can't fight against this guy, then what the _hell_ are he and Sam supposed to do? He's just some second-rate mechanic, won a bar fight back in the day but ended up almost breaking his damn hand in the process. Sam is a damn non-profit lawyer who sang 'Give Peace a Chance' in their elementary school talent show, Jesus Christ, they're so _screwed_.

"What?" Sam too, looks at Castiel. "Him?" 

Dean doesn't blame Sam for the whiff of suspicion and incredulity in his voice. Guy shows up, burns the eyes out of your old college bud, then takes you to your brother's house, where he gets himself knocked out? Yeah, it's a tough story to swallow, but it's a _true_ story, which has Dean squaring his shoulders. 

Castiel has been keeping him, and it turns out, his brother, alive for years. Now it's time for him to pick up the slack. 

"Whatever you want with us, it's not going to happen. Cas told me about your...plans or whatever, your angelic destiny crap, and it's not..." Dean doesn't know what he's saying or really even what he's refusing. He only knows that Cas seemed dead-set against letting it happen, which seems as good a reason as any to fight against it. 

"Oh, whatever _Castiel_," Dean doesn't miss the sneer in Zachariah's voice as he glances over to Cas' body, "told you is far from the truth." 

A flicker of doubt lights in Dean's chest, faint but present. He feels stupid for not thinking of it before now: whose word does he have to go on, other than Castiel's, that what Cas is saying is the truth? He trusted Castiel because...well, because he showed up and saved Ben's life, and Lisa's life, and his life, and because Castiel was there when he was terrified as a child but... "Shut up," Dean snarls, because he can't. He can't start doubting his path or his decisions now, or else he'll be lost. 

"Fine. Same as always I see, always willing to take the hard way. You can sit down for a minute." Zachariah flicks his fingers and Dean finds himself shoved backward into one of their uncomfortable 'guest' chairs. When he tries to rise, invisible hands keep him pressed down. 

"Let me the fuck--" Another flick of Zachariah's fingers and Dean finds himself screaming silently. He hurls curses and commands at Zachariah, he feels them form on his tongue, but they never manage to reach the light of day. They all wither before they ever have a chance to be heard, and then Dean is trapped, silent and helpless, as Zachariah advances on his little brother. 

Sam's eyes flick back and forth between Dean and Zachariah. "Don't worry about him," Zachariah says, shifting his body so that Dean's partially hidden from Sam's view. "He just needed to be in timeout for a little bit, the foul-mouthed little slug. I'm sure you know--reasoning with Dean Winchester? You might as well bash your head into a brick wall. No sense of reasoning." He chuckles a little bit, a sound that Sam doesn't echo. "You on the other hand Sam, you can be negotiated with. You can be brought to see reason. You're the smarter brother, always have been." 

Something in Dean's chest withers at the words. He knows that they're true, but still. Hearing his own inner monologue say them versus hearing them spill out of Zachariah's fat mouth is something altogether different. He tries to shout out at Sam, but he still can't manage to get any words out into the open. 

"You and your brother were always destined for great things. Stupendous things. But someone," Zachariah's eyes flick to Castiel once again, "decided that you didn't deserve that destiny. But it's in your blood Sam, more than you know. Even Chuckles over here has the seeds of greatness in him. You have the chance to save the world Sam. All you have to do is say 'Yes', and it can happen." 

Dean tries to shout but no sound comes from his throat. Zachariah smiles, and maybe it's just because he's not looking at Dean, and that's why Dean can see the greedy anticipation in his smile. This fucker's practically licking his chops over Sammy and Dean can't warn him, Dean can't move to save him--

A sound like a small explosion sounds in the room. Light bursts through the living room and far away, Dean hears the sound of glass shattering. He closes his eyes against the onslaught, crying out in pain. A roar sounds through the room, like a locomotive in his house, except so much louder and more terrible. It seems to last for an eternity, and Dean doesn't think that he's going to survive, his head is going to explode, his chest is going to burst--

Except then it ends, and Dean can move. He can move and he can speak and the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, "Don't fucking listen to him Sam!" 

Sam's eyes dart to him, wide and terrified, and Dean forces his shaking legs to move towards his brother. "Don't fucking trust him," Dean pants. He and Sam are clinging to each other, to the point where it becomes difficult to tell who is holding who up. "Sam, don't trust him." 

"You little cretin," Zachariah snarls, though, for the first time, a hint of fear shines in his cold, dead eyes. "When I get my Yes, you're going to be the first thing that I deal with." 

"You will _not_." The low voice cuts through the room, easy as a knife. "Get away from them Zachariah." 

Dean's heart pounds painfully into his chest. He turns around to see Castiel back on his feet. He looks a little shaken up, maybe a bit more frayed around the edges than he usually is, but he's upright. His eyes glow a cold blue, like the heart of a flame. In his hand is his blade. His face is a mask of righteous wrath. "Get back Dean," he orders, never taking his eyes off of Zachariah's form. 

Dean obeys and tugs Sam's arm to pull him backwards, out of harm's way. Castiel steps forward, coat trailing behind him. 

Zachariah smiles, even as he shifts his posture. "So nice of you to join us, Castiel," he says. Though the words and tone are pleasant, Dean can sense an undercurrent in the words. It's something malicious and something fearful. "You've been working behind the scenes so much; we were starting to wonder if you would ever come out to take a curtain call." 

"I saw your attempt," Castiel says, his voice cold and hard. "Hester almost killed an innocent boy." 

Zachariah's smile is sickly and pitying. "They're humans. There's not an innocent one in the whole lot." 

"That's what you think." Castiel flips the blade in his hand. "I've always had a higher opinion of them." 

"So we've heard." If Dean weren't watching him so closely, he might not have seen the slight recoil in Cas' hands, but he is watching closely, and he does catch it. "Oh, you think that we wouldn't have found out everything we could about you? You're not the only one who has a window to another world." 

This time Castiel's flinch is noticeable. Zachariah presses forward, his smile turning gleeful. "You haven't told them yet, have you? About where you're _really_ from? About what you did?"

"None of that matters," Castiel says, rallying. He holds his blade out as a threat, but his hand is shaking. "Whatever happened, it doesn't matter. You're going to leave these boys alone or else suffer the consequences." 

"I think they deserve to know the truth. The _whole_ truth, about the real motivations of their guardian angel." 

"Cas?" Dean can't hold in his questions anymore. "Cas, what the hell is he talking about?"

Castiel spares a stricken look in Dean's direction, and that's when Zachariah strikes. He moves forward with one smooth movement. Dean doesn't even catch the moment when he hits Castiel; he only sees the result of it. For the second time, Castiel goes flying across the room. He slides into the wall with such force that it knocks down some of the cheap, knock-off artwork that was hanging there. This time he gets up, but Dean can see the effort that the movements take. 

"It's Zachariah," Castiel answers, the words coming out in short huffs as he dodges the other angel's attacks. "Everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie." 

"Is it though?" Zachariah easily blocks a strike from Castiel before striking him in the chest with an open palm. "Is it a lie that you allowed poor little baby Sammy to be tainted with demon blood?" 

Dean's heart goes cold. Sam, his brother Sam..."What?" Sam croaks next to him. "Demon blood? What the...I've got _demon blood_ in me?" 

"Because it was the only way," Castiel gasps, staggering out of Zachariah's grasp. He locks eyes with Dean. "It was the only way to keep Sam...to keep your _mother_ safe. Azazel had to be distracted; he had to be doing something that took all of his attention so that he wouldn't be able to sense a trap--It was the only way that I could get close enough, the only way that I had a clear shot--" 

"You let some demon near my little brother?" 

"It was the only way. Azazel was coming anyway; the deal was made. He was expecting a trap; he knew about your mother and sensed me. He knew that it was a danger coming to the house, but he was arrogant. Thought that it wouldn't matter. When he was able to enter the room, when no one attacked him on his way to Sam...He was complacent and that's the only reason that I was able to shoot him. It was my one shot--I had the Colt, I knew exactly where he was going to be--_everything_ stemmed from that one night. Your mother, your father, Sam--If I stopped it then, then I thought...I thought that maybe I could stop the rest of it--"

Castiel's speaking, but the words don't make any sense. His mother? His father? What the hell is Cas--

"The fire," Sam breathes, his eyes gone wide in realization. Dean catches up a moment later. 

The fire that started in Sam's nursery when he was only six months old. The fire marshal put the cause down as bad wiring, said that it had been a miracle that the damage was so superficial. _You get one of these suckers going, you could have lost some lives here_. Dean remembers the words, impressed onto his tiny, four-year old brain. He remembers the way that his mother had clutched both him and Sam tightly to her, the almost painful grip of his father's hands. 

_You see_, his mother said, her voice faint and shaking, _I told you that angels were always looking out for us._

"You stopped it." There's a new light in Sam's eyes as he looks at Castiel. 

Zachariah rushes in again, but Castiel dodges out of the way. "Your lives were supposed to be changed by that one night. If it never happened...I thought that things might turn out differently." 

Sam's gaze is far-away. Dean recognizes the look--Sam's brain is examining the evidence, looking for patterns and habits. It doesn't take him long. "The fire in the apartment," he says. His voice is barely a whisper, but Castiel hears it. "They said that it was caused by a bad microwave. Jess was in the apartment alone; I was out late studying. She was asleep, she wouldn't have woken up in time, but the fire never spread." Sam gasps out a few breaths as the implications strike him. "You saved her life." 

"It wasn't fair," Castiel answers. Dean doesn't understand why his eyes are still so sad. "What happened to her wasn't fair to you and it certainly wasn't fair to her. She deserved better. You both did." 

A world of information is housed in what Castiel _doesn't_ say, and Dean shudders to think of that place. To live in a world where he never got to taste Jess' abysmal attempts at cooking, where he never got to appreciate her love of 80's buddy-comedies, where he never got to bond with her by drawing over Sam's face when he passed out at Thanksgiving dinner...Fear and horror rise, sour in the back of Dean's throat. 

Out of nowhere, Zachariah strikes. The force of his blow sends Castiel reeling backwards and another piece of artwork falls victim to the fight. 

"But that's not the whole truth, is it?" Castiel lunges forward, and Dean can't help but think that there's a hint of desperation fueling his movements. Zachariah easily repels Castiel. He reminds Dean of the proverbial cat--smug and awful. "All your good intentions, all your little scoops and saves, your little nudges to put them in _just_ the right spot at the right time...Where did that conviction come from? Why did little Castiel care so much about the Winchesters?"

Castiel attacks with such ferocity that Zachariah actually stumbles backwards, but his words have accomplished their purpose. Now Dean wonders--Why _did_ Castiel take such interest in his life? He asked once and never got a satisfactory answer. He'd heard the spiel about _destiny_, but that had just fallen flat. 

"Because your vision, Michael's vision, _God's_ vision...It was flawed." Castiel is panting, short, light breaths. A thin trickle of blood runs from the corner of his mouth down to his chin. "The script was never intended to work that way." 

"And you thought that you'd decide that for all of us." Zachariah's fist flies out and connects with Castiel's chin, snapping his head backwards. "But that's not the reason why, is it? Why would you care about this small, pathetic little world?" 

"Because they're all worth caring for," Castiel snarls, his wrist twisting. His blade flies in a graceful arc, slicing across Zachariah's arm. A high-pitched squeal accompanies Zachariah's roar of pain. "Every world ever created deserves to be saved." 

"Sweet." Zachariah's teeth are bared in a horrific parody of his original smile. He looks like he could rip out Castiel's throat with his bare hands. "But you're not the only one who can look into other worlds." 

The words mean nothing to Dean, but the sudden, stricken look on Cas' face--That means something. Whatever Zachariah is saying...It cuts to the heart of the matter, straight to the point that Castiel has been trying to avoid for so long. And it has to do with other worlds, whatever the hell that means.

"Didn't think that we'd figure that out, did you? Thought you'd be able to keep that dirty little secret all to yourself?" 

_Cas_, Dean wants to say, but the words catch in the back of his throat. _Cas, what the hell is he talking about?_

Zachariah knocks Castiel backwards, so easily that Dean thinks that he might have just been toying with Castiel for the entire time. Castiel hits the wall, but instead of waiting for him to recover, Zachariah presses his advantage. Dean's eyes can't catch the individual movements, so much as he sees just a flurry of motion, but it ends with Castiel disarmed and Zachariah's fingers wrapped around his throat. Easily as lifting a kitten, Zachariah hoists Castiel in the air. A terrible, gurgling sound rasps out of Castiel's throat and Dean is helpless, can only watch as his last hope is lifted off the ground like an ancient sacrifice. 

Zachariah shakes Castiel, and Dean shouts, before he can stop himself. "Cas!" 

Castiel's eyes roll over to Dean. They're wide and terrified, and it's a gut-punch sensation when Dean realizes that the fear in Cas' eyes is wholly for Dean instead of himself. Worse than the horror in Castiel's eyes, however, is the glee in Zachariah's. 

"Would you like to know the truth Dean? You seem so taken with your little angel; would you like to know the real reason he's so interested in you and your brother?" Castiel's hand moves in an awkward, stilted strike which Zachariah bats away without even looking. 

_No_, something screams in Dean's mind, something spurred on by the fearful, hopeless look in Castiel's eyes, but he doesn't say it, doesn't say anything. He says nothing and takes the coward's way out. Zachariah smiles, still holding Castiel aloft. 

"Our little Castiel here isn't actually _ours_. No," Zachariah says, glancing up at Cas and giving him a shake that's almost playful, "this little tree-topper doesn't really belong here. You see Dean, what you have to understand is, there are millions of alternate worlds and universes, all pressed against each other. Our Castiel, this world's Castiel? Good little soldier, always did what he was told. Burned out a long time ago, real sad story. But this one?" Zachariah shakes Castiel again, less friendly this time. "This one snuck in from a different world altogether."

What the hell? Different worlds? What the hell is he even talking about? Dean's confusion must show on his face because Zachariah rolls his eyes in exasperation. "I forgot that you're about as bright as a broken bulb. Think of it this way: This world, the one that you know? We'll call it World A. The world that this little pissant is from? We'll call it World B. World A's Castiel did what he should have and died like a good little peon. World B's Castiel, this little cockroach--He snuck through a crack in the wall." 

Dean looks at Castiel, dangling from Zachariah's grip. He's clawing at Zachariah's fingers, ineffectually. Helplessly. "Why?" is all that Dean can think of ask. 

Zachariah's smile could slice through any amount of human flesh and leave it a shredded mess. "Why? Because..." Castiel's struggles become frantic, his fingers curving into talons, but Zachariah shakes Cas hard enough to stop his struggles. He squeezes his fingers around Castiel's throat so tightly that Dean can see the strain in his knuckles. "Because," Zachariah continues, speaking over the awful strangled noises of Castiel's breaths, "Castiel was trying to cover up his sins." 

"There was a fight," Dean whispers, remembering the conversation he had with Cas so long ago. "He lost everything." 

"Is that what he told you?" Zachariah's voice is so smug that it has gold toilets in its beach house. "I suppose that he's not wrong. See," Zachariah says, his eyes focused with laser-intensity on Castiel, "the second that you came into this world, we felt it. When you started screwing around with the Winchesters? Oh, we felt that too. You perked our interest, so we hunted down the best psychics and dreamwalkers we could to figure out who you were. And when we found out..." Zachariah's laugh sends chills down Dean's spine. "Oh, Castiel. You poor little ant." 

Zachariah's gaze falls onto Dean. "He said that he lost everything. Did he tell you exactly what that meant?" Dean clenches his jaw, but he's so obvious; the answer is written plain across his face. "Of course not." Zachariah looks at Castiel, who manages to whimper something that sounds a lot like _No. Please._

"There was a fight." Zachariah relishes in repeating Castiel's words, putting an ugly edge on them. "He and his friends fought against God, the Creator. But there was another fight." Castiel wheezes, flailing, but Zachariah shakes him like an itinerant puppy. "A fight between himself and his allies. Would you like to know their names?"

Zachariah breathes in deep, savoring the expression of pain on Castiel's face. _Please don't_, Dean wants to ask. The seconds are ticking down, each one bringing him closer to...to what, he doesn't know, but he knows that he doesn't want to hear those names, doesn't want to know--"Sam and Dean Winchester." 

The words hit Dean like a gut-shot, like a baseball bat to the knees, like the time that his feet slipped out from under him and he fell flat on his ass. It knocked the wind out of him and he lay there on the ground for several moments just trying to remember how to breathe. He knew...He knew that there was something shady about Cas, knew it from the very beginning. But Zachariah's words fall like a guillotine and, with the blade, reshape his world. 

He sees it on Cas' face--the resignation, the despair. Castiel shifts his eyes away from Dean, towards the ceiling. Zachariah's tongue flicks out, snake-like, tasting the misery in the air. 

"Oh yes. Castiel's world had a Sam and Dean Winchester as well. They were his best friends, his comrades. His _brothers_. Except they weren't in the end, were they?" Zachariah's tone turns mockingly gentle. "They rejected you, cast you out. There was a _fight_. And that destroyed the dream team, didn't it? They never trusted you after that. Not Sam and certainly not Dean." Zachariah hisses in mocking empathy. "Dean." Castiel's eyes dart over to meet Dean's eyes, almost involuntarily. "You would have done anything for him, wouldn't you?" 

Something weird is happening in Dean's chest--it's warm and cold and shredding and-- "But Dean didn't your help. Didn't want _you_. You were dead to him; that's what he told you. And because he said that, you walked away. And because of _that_, what happened?" 

Castiel struggles, but he can't escape Zachariah's grip. There's a frantic edge to his struggles and Dean knows, with the same certainty that he knows that Sam is his brother and that gravity will always be around, that he doesn't want to hear what's to come. 

"You lost everything." Zachariah's words are soft and horrible. "But you didn't really mean that, did you? You won in the end--you locked away the Creator, far away where he couldn't cause you any troubles, where he could never again disturb the world. But in the end...You lost the Winchesters." 

Zachariah looks towards Dean before he finally drops Castiel like a piece of trash. He addresses the next words to Dean. "They died. His precious Winchesters. Castiel walked away from them because his _feelings_ were hurt, because he couldn't take the pain of Dean Winchester's rejection. And because he walked away, because he left--" Zachariah puts his foot on Castiel's back, between his shoulderblades. "They won the war but it wasn't enough. _You_ weren't enough. Because you walked away, Sam and Dean died. You watched them die." 

A hand squeezes around Dean's chest. He can't...Too much is happening right now, fear and confusion and betrayal all coiling tighter in his chest and Castiel is still on the ground with Zachariah's gleaming black shoe pressing him into the ground. 

"Your fault that they died, so what did you do? Did you just lick your wounds, ruminate on your failures? No, you did one better. You found yourself an alternate world, one that you could manipulate to your heart's content. All you had to do was set up the pieces, wait, and then...Then _they_ came along. Your very own, ready-made Sam and Dean. And you, their little guardian angel." 

Zachariah turns his attention from Castiel to Dean. "So now you see--He never really cared about _you_, not really. You're just the shadow of the man that he loved, the only way that he could recapture any part of him. But he let his Dean Winchester die, so what do you think he's going to do with you, his _replacement_, when you get too troublesome?" 

Zachariahs' words burrow into Dean, into the place that he tries to keep hidden from everyone, including himself. It's the place that whispers that his parents don't love him as much as they love Sam, the place that reminds Dean that even with his college education he's just a lowly mechanic, the place that examines exactly why Lisa and Cassie broke up with him and comes up with new and interesting reasons each time. And now...He saw the regret in Cas' eyes, the swiftly repressed flashes of longing, of yearning. At the time, Dean had thought it was strange--Castiel didn't even know him, why would he look like he'd been missing Dean for years--but now it all makes sense. Cas wasn't missing _him_, he was missing the other Dean. The one that he loved and, according to Zachariah, let die. 

"Yeah, that's right," Zachariah murmurs, his voice a facsimile of understanding. "Awful isn't it, to know that you're the runner-up, the sloppy seconds? But you can make it better. One simple word, and you could change everything, you and Sam. All you have to do is just tell me 'Yes', and it can all disappear: this self-doubt, this lingering guilt. One word and you can be more powerful than you'd ever dreamed of; certainly more powerful than Feathers over there. One word and you can fix everything, Dean." 

Dean can't...He can't breathe, he can't...It's all happening too fast and even though Zachariah sounds sympathetic he still has that glint glimmering in the back of his eye, and Dean remembers the awful sputtering sounds that Sam made when Zachariah choked him. That gleam in his eyes tells Dean that he'd be only too delighted to do it again, and Dean can't, he _can't_\--

_ **"Enough."** _

The word cracks through the room like lightning, like thunder, like the roar and snap of creation. The windows shake in their frames and Dean feels the waves from that voice rip through his body. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stands up and he wants to either cry or scream; he's not sure which. It's vengeance, it's grief...It's _Castiel_, standing up from the floor, blade in hand. A harsh, blue light emanates off his body as the shrill ringing which Dean will always associate with Castiel starts to build to an ear-shattering pitch. 

"Whatever happened in the past, whatever my motivations, one fact remains clear." Castiel steps forward, eyes gimlet and focused. He moves smoothly, like he'd never been hurt, like the old Castiel who could demolish entire cities. "You will not hurt these boys." 

He strikes and there's a lightness in the motion, a grace that was missing before. Zachariah manages to block his motion, but only just. For the first time, a faint flicker of worry passes over Zachariah's face. Castiel is a force of nature as he moves forward, always on the offensive. "Your destiny, your plan, your _lies_. It ends. No one, _nothing_, is going to interfere with their ability to live their lives. This ends, now." 

And then Castiel attacks with the fury of a typhoon. He doesn't give Zachariah any openings; Dean's eyes have trouble following his movements. There's no witty banter in this fight; every move is intense, purposeful, and focused. 

And it's not enough. Even though his limbs are in a flurry of movement, Zachariah is still standing. Then Dean starts to see the small stutters in Cas' movements, the hitch in his limbs that speaks of exhaustion. Cas is fading. 

The thought barely has time to take horrible root in Dean's mind before Zachariah strikes. He pushes his hand forward and a shockwave of raw power flies out. It's enough to knock Dean and Sam backwards on their asses, to say nothing of what it does to Cas, who got the brunt of it. Dean hauls himself upright, coughing and sputtering, spitting blood out of his mouth where he bit his lip. Sam, who looks worse for wear, wipes at a stray drop of blood from his nose. 

He looks for Cas, automatically, and finds him but the sight is enough to send Dean's heart plummeting to his knees. Zachariah has Cas pinned against the wall by his throat. The sight reminds Dean uncomfortably of butterflies with their beautiful wings motionless, pinned to a corkboard. Castiel's blade lies abandoned on the living room floor, and even as Dean watches, a similar silver blade drops out of Zachariah's sleeve. He presses the tip of the blade into the vulnerable hollow of skin and flesh at the base of Cas' throat. 

"Try as you want, this story always ends the same way," Zachariah hisses. The light dances off the surface of his blade as he presses down on the blade, hard enough that a single drop of blood beads to the surface. Zachariah is going to...he's going to... "One way or another, they _will_ say yes, and then this world will end the way that yours should have. And nothing you do will ever make the slightest bit of difference." 

"Dean, Dean we need to get out of here," Sam whispers. Though he tugs on Dean's sleeve, his eyes are irrevocably fixed to Castiel's form. "We need...Dean, come _on_...." 

Zachariah raises the blade, overly dramatic and arrogant, so confident in his victory, in Castiel's weakness...Cas' eyes flick towards Dean and his mouth moves--_Run_, is what he's saying, over and over again, even as his life ticks away in seconds. _Run. Run._

Even now, Cas' first thought is of him. And that...

Dean lurches into movement. He stumbles on legs gone numb with terror, but he stays upright. His fumbling fingers close around the hilt of Castiel's blade. The weight is strangely familiar in his hands; his grip shifting automatically until it feels _right_. 

All of Zachariah's attention is focused on Castiel and his apparent victory. He doesn't notice Dean lunging forward, not until it's too late. 

Dean puts all of his effort behind the blow, puts all of his rage, his confusion, his frustration, his betrayal, his fear...It boils up and over from his chest, from that dark place where he puts all of his seething emotions, and through his arm. A lifetime of protection, a blessed life, his brother, his mother...Dean puts all thirty years of his life behind the blow. 

The blade slides into Zachariah's body easy as breathing, like it was meant to do this, like _Dean_ was meant to do this. It's then, with blood and light pouring from his body, that Zachariah turns around and looks at Dean as if he were a person instead of an empty checkbox waiting to be filled. "You," he has time to say, contempt dripping from his voice, before blinding white-blue light fills his eyes and mouth. A high scream sounds through Dean's house as the light rises. It consumes everything in its path; it burns the hair off of Dean's arms, it scorches through his retinas until he has to duck his head--

A soft hand lands on his shoulder. Gentle warmth fills his body, the slow, sweet burn of a soft spring afternoon. Dean relaxes into the touch, even as the horror and pain fades from his body. "It's over," a low voice soothes. "You did fine Dean; it's over now." 

Dean dares to open his eyes. He's confronted with the ruin of his living room: pictures and artwork devastated and in pieces on the ground. Light glances off of shards of glass littered around the room. Worst of all--Zachariah's body lies in the middle of his floor, black wings charred into the ground on either side of his body. His sightless eyes stare blankly towards the ceiling. His mouth is open in a vague expression of shock, an eternal creature brought crashing down into mortality. Dean can't bring himself to feel guilty. Not when he remembers the smile on Zachariah's face as he watched Sam sputter for air. 

"You did well," Castiel tells him. "It's over." 

Dean looks up at Cas, his chest filled to bursting with relief, with fondness, with gratitude...Then Castiel pulls away and Dean remembers Zachariah's words and the look on Castiel's face when he said them. 

Castiel looks down at Zachariah's body. On the ground, he looks so much smaller. Ineffectual. A complicated series of expressions cross Castiel's face--triumph and regret, relief and sadness. 

Zachariah's words come back to Dean as he watches Cas. Somewhere, in Cas' past, there were another Dean and another Sam and, whoever those two assholes were, Cas watched them die. And no matter what the truth of the matter is, Cas feels like it was his fault. 

Dean opens his mouth to say something--an apology? A demand for the truth? He doesn't know, but he knows that he can't leave Cas standing over the body of an angel without offering some kind of support. 

He takes a deep breath, but a subtle breeze rustles through the air. Before Dean can even blink, Castiel is in front of him, blade in his hand. His gaze is focused on the newcomer in the room--a tall man, dressed in an impeccable suit. The dim light shines off his dark skin as his impassive eyes survey the carnage of Dean's living room. 

"Uriel," Castiel greets, shifting to keep Dean and Sam behind him. 

The angel, because he has to be, looks Castiel up and down. His face registers no surprise and only a vague interest. "Castiel," he finally says. His low voice is completely even and impossible to read. "Though you are not the Castiel that I'm familiar with." 

"No. But if I'm correct then you know who I am and why I am here." 

Uriel's eyes look down at Zachariah's empty, staring eyes, and then back to Cas. "Zachariah was the leader of Heaven," he comments. "Without him, the angels will be thrown into chaos." 

There's some kind of angel double-speak that Dean doesn't understand, but Cas seems to. Uriel's eyes move to Sam and then to Dean--not the swift, dart of Castiel or the slow drag of Zachariah's eyes. No, this look is weighted, considering. Under the weight of that gaze, Dean wants to hunch into himself, but he forces his spine to remain straight and tall. He meets Uriel's eyes and it's the angel who looks away first. 

"You know that there will always be those who feel that the Winchesters have a different destiny in store," Uriel finally says, turning his eyes back to Castiel. 

"I do." Castiel's voice matches Uriel's even tone. "I also know that, with sufficient warning and guidance, they won't act on that feeling." 

For a long moment, Uriel says nothing. His unblinking, unwavering gaze never moves from Castiel and Cas never moves from in front of them. Then something relaxes in Uriel's shoulders and his posture becomes something closer to human. 

"With the void left in Heaven, there will be a need for someone to fill it." Uriel's stare has the weight of a thousand years as he stares unblinkingly at Castiel. 

"They will need a strong hand. A just hand. One that isn't obsessed with fulfilling a destiny that conceived of by an absent creator." 

Dean hears the careful spaces between the words as well as the undertone of words unsaid. He thinks he might understand what Uriel is proposing and what Castiel is agreeing to. He doesn't know how much he trusts this angel, with his continuous stare and impassive face, but he certainly trusts him more than Zachariah. More so, since it sounds like he's proposing to withdraw and leave Dean and Sam to their lives. 

"With so many angels looking for guidance, I would be remiss in leaving them for too long. And Castiel? Those angels will not suffer a rogue to tamper with fate a second time."

Castiel's chin lifts. "Fate has no pull here. But I understand." He looks at Zachariah's empty body. The gesture is laden with meaning. "Those same angels should take the warning in this room. The Winchesters are protected. From now until their dying days."

Uriel nods, a slow inclination of his head. Then, the air in the room rustles and flutters, and then it's only the three of them standing in the room with a dead body. Then the room fuzzes around him. Dean squints, trying to keep the walls in sharp focus, but it's no use. He closes his eyes, hoping to clear his vision. When he opens them, his living room has been returned to its normal level of cluttered mess. In the renewed peace of the room, Dean sucks in a shaky breath. 

The room is still, silent, and close for a long moment. Only the shaky sound of Dean and Sam's breaths disturb the air. The moment hangs in the air, like waiting for the ball to drop on New Year's, but worse, because Dean has no idea what happens when they reach zero. Cas turns to look at Dean and the moment breaks, the ball drops, the clock reaches zero, and Dean doesn't know _how_ he knows what's about to happen, but he does--

"Cas," he begins, reaching out, thinking that if he can lay a hand on Cas he might be able to keep him here. "Cas, don't--" 

But it's useless because within the space between one breath and the next, Cas disappears. 

\---

So Dean does what any red-blooded American would do--he pours himself a drink. Just for good measure, he pours Sam a drink as well. 

After the first glass has been drunk in silence, Dean pours each of them a second glass. By the time Sam finishes that glass, his eyes are glassy and his movements stilted. Dean understands. It's been a hell of a night.

"So that was..." Sam swallows around nothing, fingers carding through his hair. "There are angels. And demons." He laughs. "You know, Jess and I got into a four hour long argument about whether or not there were ghosts." Sam laughs, but it's a rueful, sad little thing. "She was convinced that she saw her grandmother's ghost when she was a kid. I kept on trying to tell her that ghosts aren't anything more than dreams." At Dean's incredulous look, Sam shrugs. "It was college. We'd had a lot of weed." Sam's eyes fly open. "Oh fuck, Jess! Oh god, what is she going to--Castiel just grabbed and yanked me and I couldn't even tell her where I was going--" 

Sam fumbles for his phone. It takes him several tries to dial, but eventually he works out the puzzle of speed-dial. He presses the phone to his ear with shaking fingers. "Jess?" he finally shouts when the opposite end picks up. "Jess, baby, is that you? Are you ok?"

"Um...yes?" Dean can hear Jess' muzzy voice through the phone's speakers. "Hon, what's wrong?"

Sam's laugh has a shrill, brittle edge to it that sets Dean's teeth on edge. "What's wrong? Where do I start?"

Jess' voice is a little more alert when she asks, "Sam, what happened? Did Dean do something stupid?"

"Hey," Dean complains, loud enough that Jess shouts a quick _Sorry Dean_ at him. 

"You're ok?" Sam asks. Some of his fear bleeds out of his body. "You're not hurt?"

"No," Jess answers. "Sam, hon, what happened? You were just going to Dean's for a few after-party drinks, did you break into something harder?" Her voice drops into a conspiratorial whisper that nonetheless carries through the phone lines. "Sammy baby, you know that you always have really bad trips when you do 'shrooms." 

"No!" Sam snaps, looking wide-eyed over his shoulder at Dean. "It's just..." He looks helplessly at Dean, who does the only thing he can think of. 

He snatches the phone from Sam and puts his back to him. "Hey Jess," he says smoothly, forcing a smile into his voice. "Everything's fine. Sammy just had one drink too many and tried to sleep it off. He had one of his drunk-dreams, you know?" Dean has no idea what he's talking about, but either he's aimed closer than he thought, or Jess is exhausted enough to swallow any explanation, because he gets a sleepy little hum of agreement. "Anyway, I'm going to put him back to bed and send him back to you tomorrow morning. Sorry for waking you up!" 

He hangs up quickly and turns to Sam. "You cannot tell her _anything_," he hisses at Sam. 

"How did...She didn't remember anything," Sam says. "I don't...it was chaos at the club Dean. It was a nightmare. There was fire and blood and Brady..." A retch catches in Sam's throat. "How can she not remember that?"

Something too vague to be called sadness but too sharp to be called yearning opens up in Dean's stomach. "It was Cas," he says, remembering the fuzziness in his own mind after the first attack on the house. "He can...Remember a few months ago when I got robbed?"

"You weren't robbed," Sam says slowly, realization dawning on his face. "That was...Dean, how long have you known about this?"

Dean drops his head into his hands. He needs another drink if he's going to have this conversation. 

\---

He and Sam talk until the early hours of the morning, long enough that long streaks of orange and pink start to spread across the sky. Dean calls Charlie to let her know that he won't be in that day, while Sam does the same for Jess and his law firm. Dean mumbles a strained goodnight to Sam before he collapses into his bed. Through the walls, he can hear the creak of the guest bed and the soft sounds of Sam falling asleep. 

He sinks into his mattress, but can't fall asleep. He keeps thinking about what Zachariah said, about alternate worlds and what Castiel did and different versions of himself. What were they like, he wonders. Did they stay up late at night drinking? Did they watch crappy movies and laugh? Did they go out for Sam's birthday? 

How did they die? What did Castiel do? Did he abandon them in their last moments? Did he walk away when the other Dean was begging him to stay? Did the other Dean cast Castiel out, only to call him back? Did Castiel try to save them? Did Castiel watch them die? Was he there? What did he say? 

Dean falls asleep to the memory of the stricken look on Cas' face. 

\---

His eyes open and he's in his parent's house. Which, weird, because he didn't fall asleep here. 

He doesn't have much time to worry about the strangeness of the situation, because the unmistakable scent of smoke attacks his nostrils. 

Fire. Something is on fire in his parent's house. 

Dean rolls out of bed, to find his second shock of the day--his legs are short, stubby little things. When he brings his hands to his face, he finds tiny, incapable hands attached to the end of his hands. He doesn't take the time to ponder the discrepancy, however--something beyond himself urges him out of the room, into the hallway. The smell of smoke hangs heavy in the hallway, burning down his throat and stinging his eyes. Dean coughs and blinks away tears. Through teary eyes, he sees the worst sight imaginable--flames licking out from Sam's nursery. Fear wraps cold fingers around his heart and Dean opens his mouth to scream--

"Look out Dean!" His father shoves him backwards, hard enough that Dean stumbles into the wall. He falls, his limbs clumsy and uncoordinated. While he's struggling to get up he hears his father's anguished shout of _Mary!_. He might not understand exactly the reason for the shout, but he understands the pain behind the cry. Something in his chest breaks, huge and irrevocable, and somehow, Dean knows in his four year old heart, that he's been hurt in a way that he'll never recover from. 

His father comes stumbling out of Sam's nursery, clutching his brother to his chest. "Dean, take Sam and go! Now!" His father pushes at his shoulders and Dean runs, fast as his legs can take him, down the stairs and out the front door. Sam cries in small, hitching breaths as Dean runs out onto the lawn in his bare feet. Once outside, he stops and looks over his shoulder. Flames lick at the windows of Sam's nursery and even outside, Dean remembers the heat and stench. 

Then his father scoops up him and Sam in his arms and takes off running, just as the window explodes, sending glass flying and heat washing over his skin--

A scream dies in Dean's throat as the scene abruptly changes. Without warning, he's yanked out of that nightmare world and into another world. 

In this world, he's back in his parent's house, but this time, everything is calm. He looks around and quickly recognizes his surroundings: Sam's nursery. Except this time, instead of being awash in flames, everything is calm and quiet. In his crib, Sam makes sleepy baby noises as he shifts in his sleep. It's enough to make his heart ache with the sweetness--at least until the air ruffles. 

Dean's nose wrinkles at the sour scent that fills the air. His heart thuds hard once in his heart before working double time when a shadowy figure separates itself from the darkness of the corners of Sam's room. Malice clings to the figure like a cloak. Every part of Dean shrinks back in fear, especially when the figure steps into the faint slice of moonlight gleaming in through the window. The light shines off of his eyes, revealing a pale, jaundiced, yellow around his pupils. Knowing that isn't his seeps in Dean's brain. Even without having it explained, he knows what and who this man is--demon. _Azazel_. Fear, uncontrollable and insatiable, rises in Dean. Azazel seems to look directly at Dean and Dean is frozen, he can't run, can't scream, can't--

The man turns to look at Sammy's crib. A scream catches and dies in Dean's throat as he sees the small knife in the man's hand. _Not Sammy, not Sammy, not Sammy_\--The man brings the knife to his own wrist and makes a small nick in the skin. Bright scarlet blood wells to the surface before dripping down, into Sam's open mouth. 

_Demon blood_, Cas had said, and watching the scene, Dean's stomach turns. While his family had slept peacefully mere feet away, this monster had crept into Sam's room, had hovered over his defenseless brother--

Another figure steps out of the shadows. At the sight of this figure, something in Dean's stomach unclenches. Azazel had radiated nothing but rage and cold, sly malice, but this...Cas' face is clear in the moonlight as he raises an antique gun and points it straight at Azazel. 

"I knew you would come," Azazel says, his voice low and amused, like he doesn't have a care in the world--Dean can feel Cas' rage and fear, but from a distance, as though he's watching through a translucent window. It's enough though--He knows that Cas is terrified. He can feel Cas' resolve, his determination--Everything hinges on this one moment, this one chance. Light sparks in the corner of the room--_Fire_, Dean realizes with a kind of shrill terror that he's never known before in his life. This fire will consume his life, this fire will determine the course of his stars for years to come, this fire will take his perfect life and shred it into nothingness. Azazel laughs as the flames spread up the walls. "I've known it from the moment that you landed in this world that you would--"

Cas' finger tightens on the trigger. A muted explosion sounds in the room as fire erupts from the muzzle of the gun. In slow motion, Dean watches the bullet fly from the gun, on an unerring path straight into Azazel's forehead. 

The demon stares at Cas, eyes wide and dumbfounded. A lifetime is held in the moment before he collapses to the ground, a puppet without his strings, a house of cards in a stiff wind. Azazel falls and when he does, makes no sound. 

Dean expects there to be some kind of relief from Cas, and there is, but it's overshadowed by his urgency. Sam is crying now, huge screams torn from his small lungs that scrunch up his whole face and turn his body scarlet with his rage. The flames continue in their path, spreading along the carpets and walls, and the scent of smoke hangs thick and heavy in Dean's throat. Cas moves efficiently through the room. He stands over Azazel's body before holding his hand over the carcass. With a shimmer of air, it disappears. 

Next to receive Cas' attention are the flames. A outstretched hand banishes them back into the corner, where a tiny little ember flickers. It's still a danger, but it's manageable. It's not the blazing inferno which will destroy another Dean's life. 

Lastly, Castiel tends to Sam, whose tiny fists are waving in the air with infant indignation. "Shhh," Castiel whispers, a single finger passing over Sam's forehead. At his touch, Sam quiets. His eyes open into something wide and wondrous, while his mouth falls open in the closest expression to awe an infant can create. "You're fine," Cas says, passing his hand over the fine dusting of hair on Sam's head. "Everything's going to be fine now." 

Thundering footsteps echo through the hallway and the door bursts open. Illuminated in the doorway are both his parents--younger than he's used to seeing them, but they're _there_, together--"Sam!" Mary gasps, her eyes wide and terrified as they dart between Sam's crib and the tiny lick of flames in the corner. 

His parents act as a unit: John grabs a blanket and smothers the fire in the corner while Mary darts forward and snatches Sam out of his crib. All the while, they never look at Castiel, who watches the scene with a hint of melancholy and pride--"Mom, what's happening?" 

Dean has the surreal experience of seeing himself as a child, silhouetted in the light from the hallway. "What's wrong?" his younger self asks, knuckling sleep out of his eyes. "Is Sam ok?"

Mom moves forward and drops to one knee, holding Sam against her body with one arm and wrapping Dean in an embrace with the other. "Everything's fine now," she says, pressing a kiss to the top of Dean's head. "Everything's going to be fine." 

Dean's eyes look past his mother and his younger self, to Castiel, standing invisible in the corner, watching the scene unfold before his eyes. A fragile, forlorn smile sits on his face and for the shortest of moments, Dean feels emotions that aren't his own--regret, pride, loss, grief, and the unnamable empty feeling of watching something beloved grow apart separate from you. 

Then Cas' eyes flick to him and a wall is slammed down, cutting Dean off from those emotions and sending him spiraling into the blackness of sleep. 

\---

In the afternoon, when Dean emerges from sleep, he staggers out to his kitchen to find Sam already there. Sam's hair is a rat's nest and his arms stick out of the sleeves of one of Dean's robes. He's indulging in cereal that, Dean knows from mornings spent at Sam's joyless house, he normally wouldn't be caught near. Sugar clings to his lips and chin when he hears Dean enter. 

"Hey," he grunts, chewing slowly. 

Dean's reply is a low groan and a desperate bid for the Keurig. Soon, the scent of fresh coffee fills his nostrils, giving him enough energy to turn to Sam. "Sleep well?" he asks, because obviously Sam had some version of Rip Van Winkle slumber. 

"Sure," Sam says, and maybe no one else would be able to catch the slight hesitation in Sam's voice, but Dean's pretty damn attuned to every single one of Sam's moods and voices. He turns around and all it takes is a raised eyebrow from him before Sam hunches in protectively over his cereal. 

"It's just...Remember that whole 'alternate worlds' thing?" Sam focuses in on the last few shards of soggy cereal floating in his milk, poking them with his spoon with savant-like determination. "Well...I think that I might have seen one of them."

Dean's attention snaps to Sam with all the force of a bear-trap. "I...It must have been when I was a baby. The fire. But...I was _there_ Dean. I saw what happened." Sam's throat jumps a few times and when he speaks, his voice is thick. "And then I saw what happened here, in our lives. Dean...he saved us. I don't know what else he did, what else might have happened, but...He saved us. He saved Mom." 

"Yeah," Dean agrees, because what else is there to say? He doesn't know how the other Dean's life turned out (obviously not well), but his life here...He has two parents who love him and a brother who's possibly the smartest person in the world. Said brother has a fiancee who adores him and who could possibly rule the world if she wasn't so busy doing other things. Dean has friends who love him, a job at which he excels...

"If you ever...I mean, I don't guess that he drops in just to say hi, but if ever talk to him again...thank him?" 

\---

Dean tries to talk to Cas. He speaks into the emptiness of his bedroom, tells him how grateful he is. He mentions Sam's gratitude, tells Cas about things that happened in his day. 

Cas doesn't answer. Sometimes Dean will think that he feels a disturbance in the air behind him, but when he whirls around, there's nothing there. Sometimes he'll think that he sees Cas out the corner of his eye, but when he looks closer, the face isn't right. It might be the same hair, but the eyes are wrong. It's the right coat, but the height is wrong. 

And Dean knows by now that speaking to Cas is a measure in futility, but he still does it. He speaks without ever expecting a reply. 

And then he gets one. 

\---

It happens gradually. One moment Dean is having a reoccurring dream about being asked to host the Induction Ceremony at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the next moment, he's being gently removed. The city streets drift into mist, as do the rest of his surroundings, and then, when Dean looks around, he's standing in a field next to the Impala. 

He bites back a shout when he sees the teenager rummaging around in the trunk, because, when the teenager straightens, Dean recognizes his own, younger, features. There are a few differences--the pale white scar snaking over his chin is new, but it's still him, except Dean knows that he was never in a field like this. 

He startles back when he hears his father's voice call, "Dean! Hurry up!" Dean whirls around to see--He's not sure what the hell it is, only that it's terrifying. It looks to be the figure of a woman, except she's filmy around the edges and lit up from the inside with an ethereal glow. As Dean watches in disbelief, she flickers around the edges and fizzes out, like a staticky image on a television screen. 

Dean's younger self runs straight at where the apparition was, a...Is that a shotgun in his hand? As Dean watches with disbelief, his younger self lifts the gun to his shoulder with an ease born of practice. "Keep her occupied!" his father shouts, turning back to his task, and oh dear god, Dean just now notices that they're in a cemetery. What he thought was a field is a cemetery, and his father is digging up a grave. His father is digging up a grave and this version of Dean, who can't be a day over fifteen, is holding a shotgun. As Dean watches in horrified fascination, his younger self raises the gun to his shoulder and shoots cleanly into the woman's form. He absorbs the recoil naturally, as though shooting a gun is a reflex action, the same as closing your eyes when you sneeze--involuntary and natural. 

"Keep your eyes on the ball," Dad shouts, sounding strangely irritated. The younger Dean just nods, sets his face in determination and raises the gun again. 

Mist swirls around Dean's feet and rises to his waist. It grows thicker and thicker, obscuring his vision. The last thing he sees, through a thick grey fog, is himself pumping a shot gun and shooting at the woman's figure while his father drops a lit match into an open grave. 

\---

After that, Dean's taken on a whirlwind tour of nightmare scenarios. Knowledge that he shouldn't possibly have comes easily to him--he looks at a horrific creature, its face a mishmash of different features and skin tones, disintegrating before his eyes, and he thinks _shapeshifter_. He knows now that iron repels ghosts, he knows that a shotgun filled with rock salt will also work. He knows how to lay a ghost to rest. He knows that silver will kill shifters and werewolves. He knows that vampires have to have their heads cut off and that wendigos need to be burned to death. He knows that demons have black eyes, except for those who have either red, yellow, or white eyes. He knows that only a few things can hurt a demon and those things are painfully, often punishingly hard to come by. 

He knows that Jess doesn't make it. 

He watches Jess burn, stuck to the ceiling, blood dripping from the wound in her stomach. He watches her face contort in agony, listens to her scream. He retches, even as he watches himself pull Sam away from the blistering flames. 

He watches how that moment changes his brother forever, sees some of the light die behind Sam's eyes. He watches his brother become a machine and watches himself...He doesn't know how much there is to devolve when there was nothing there to begin with, but he watches himself start to spiral downwards and downwards. 

He watches his father sell away his soul and his life, just so his sons can live. 

He watches Sam die, throat torn raw and bloody from the agony of screaming denials to the sky. He watches Sam collapse and knows that even now, removed from the real problem, his real brother sleeping calm and peaceful across time, he'll never recover from this sight. 

Dean knows so much now. 

He knows that he sells his soul in order to bring Sam back to life. 

He knows that he dies. 

He knows what the fires of Hell feel like. He knows how knives feel cutting into his skin. In his dream, Dean shrinks away from the pain and agony, even though he's not really feeling any of it. He knows what those expressions on his face mean, knows that there's no way that a human could survive those wounds under normal circumstances. He knows that eventually he crumbles. He knows that, after thirty years, whatever bit that made Dean _Dean_ is gone, and that Dean gets up off the table and picks a knife up himself. He knows exactly how his face splits in a rictus grin, exactly how he looks with gore and blood flecking his skin. He retches because there's no forgiveness for this, there's no redemption, there's no way to ever wash these sins clean--

And then. 

And then. 

The darkness of Hell is eclipsed by a bright, white light, blinding in its intensity. It scorches through Dean's retinas and it would be unbearable, save for the familiar warmth drifting through his body. Even here, separate from any physical body--"Cas?" Dean asks, disbelief and awe rushing through his body. 

The light surrounds Dean. As it touches him, the blood and filth recede from his skin. His scars are healed, his skin restored to new. He looks into the light, expression a mingling of fear and hope. 

A single hand emerges from the light and touches Dean's shoulder. A voice, commanding and absolute, shakes through the worlds. It settles deep in Dean's chest as he watches his other self rise from the horrors of Hell.

_Dean Winchester is saved._

\---

After that, the visions come faster and faster. Dean lives months in minutes, but he manages to see everything. 

He learns about the Apocalypse and the Righteous Man. He watches Sam disintegrate. He watches himself lose faith. 

And through it all, Cas is there. He keeps to the sidelines as a spectator, but Dean can feel the emotions roiling through him--pride, confusion, anger, interest, and worst of all, doubt. It's an intoxicating cocktail of feelings from a being meant to be free from them, and, when Cas steps up, when he throws away millennia of training and brainwashing, all for the sake of one man, Dean isn't really surprised. 

He can't stop his cry of horror, however, when he watches Castiel explode into nothingness. Only gore is left behind, and that's...That's not this story is supposed to end, not with Cas dead, and the Devil rising--

Castiel comes back and from that moment, everything unravels. 

The Apocalypse. Dean knows what that means now. He knows why Cas looked at Ellen like he was seeing a ghost, because he _was_, Ellen and Jo _died_ in a little hardware store and all for nothing. It's all for nothing, he finds out--the Apocalypse ends, but at the cost of Sam. At the cost of Cas. 

Even after Sam comes back, it's not the same. Nothing is the same, not even Cas. Dean knows why Cas keeps his distance--He feels Cas' shame hollow in his own chest as he stays away from Dean. As he lies to Dean. As he betrays Dean. 

And then--Leviathans. They swarm through Cas, eating him whole, and Dean feels Cas' horror as he shreds apart. It's magnified by his own horror when Cas' coat washes up on the shore. And then Dean watches himself disintegrate. It's then that he realizes what was probably in front of his face for a while--_He loved him_, Dean sees, watching himself down another bottle of beer. _He loved him and now he's gone._

Until he isn't. Until Cas comes back, but with no memories. Until Cas gets his memories back, but then disappears into madness. Until he and Dean are thrown into Purgatory and Cas disappears. The months in Purgatory pass in a matter of moments, but in those moments Dean feels it all--Cas' anguish at Dean's unanswered prayers, Cas' terror at the Leviathans, Cas' determination to do one thing and one thing only--_Keep Dean safe_. 

And then Dean realizes--_He loves him too._ And it's awful, it's terrible, to watch them fall apart, again and again. Time after time, he watches himself and Cas come so close and time after time, he watches them implode. Through trials and falls, humanity and Marks--Cas stands by him and Dean pushes him away, or Dean supports Cas and Cas pushes him away. 

And he sees, from an outside perspective, how much each would be willing to give up for the other, the length that these two would go for each other. All throughout the glimpse of years, Cas' love washes over Dean, until he can't believe that the idiot in front of him doesn't realize it, until Dean's surprised that the sun doesn't eclipse with the force of it. 

\---

He hadn't understood what Zachariah meant at first, about the fight. 

He sees now. 

He sees his mother's death (again) and sees what it does to his other self, the pit of despair and agony that it plunges him into. He sees that pain coalesce into rage, sees that rage turn outward into the one target who won't fight back. He watches Cas take it--Dean's rage, his abuse, his grief--and he watches Cas break under the strain. He watches Cas walk away, and even when Cas comes back, it's not the same. 

There's space where none existed before. The trust between the two of them is broken. Cas cares only about the mission, while Dean cares only about revenge. They're two faulty gears, operating a machine doomed to failure. 

They fail. 

They win the battle--Dean and Sam gasping and bloodied, Cas hanging on by his fingers. God is almost sealed away, but it's not enough. The world, the _universe_ is tearing apart at the seams and at the edge of chaos are Dean, Cas, and Sam. Dean, his body ravaged, reaches out for Cas. 

"Cas," Dean chokes out, blood dribbling out the corner of his mouth. "Cas, do it." 

Cas looks back at Dean, denial writ across his face as he shakes his head. "No," he murmurs, audible even over the screaming of the world. "No, Dean, you can't--you can't ask this of me. Not now." 

"Do it," Dean snarls, his voice thick and choked with pain. He's already dying, Dean realizes from his safe vantage point. Dean is dying and with his final breaths he wants...

"Please," Cas chokes out. His fingers curl into fists, ripping up shreds of grass. He ducks his head, hiding his expression. "You can't...I can't..."

"You have to," Dean says through gritted teeth. "It's the only way." Sam might argue, but Sam is already too far gone for words. He lays next to Dean, limp and motionless, with only a faint rasp of air scraping through his mouth to prove that he's still alive. "It's the only way." 

Around them, the world shatters, but these two only have eyes for each other.

Cas looks at Dean, his eyes wild and hopeless. "I'll never forgive you," he hisses, rage and grief intertwined on his face. "For the rest of time, I'll never--"

"I know," Dean murmurs. His eyes flutter shut for a moment before they snap open and focus back on Cas. "I'm an asshole. But you have to...You have to do this." Dean's hand spasms out and gropes for a few seconds before he finds Cas' wrist. Cas puts up a token resistance, but he allows Dean to drag his hand onto Dean's chest. 

"I'm sorry," is the last thing Dean says, his eyes already fluttering closed. "Sam too. We didn't...I didn't. I didn't want this." Dean forces his eyes open, gaze locked on Cas' face. "Guess it doesn't matter what I wanted." Cas' throat works as his eyes close. "Hey, look at me, asshole." Cas' eyes open, anger and sorrow in their depths. "There you are," Dean breathes. Impossibly, a smile crosses his face. "It should have been you," Dean says, his voice little more than a whisper. "All those years--It should have been you." 

"Damn you," Cas chokes out, his fists curling in impotent rage. "How dare you--"

"Get to work," Dean murmurs, mouth going slack. "Neither of us are hanging on that much longer." Cas curls his fingers in Dean's shirt, jumping when Dean wraps his fingers around his wrist. "Sam too," Dean whispers. Dean's free hand finds the tails of his brother's shirt and clutches it as best he can. "I'm not going to have enough." 

Cas' hand finds Sam's wrist and he grabs it tightly. 

"Sorry Cas." A faraway look comes to Dean's eyes. "It was you," he says, like he's only just realizing it. "It was always you." A horrible, dry sob coughs out of Cas, but even as his body shakes, light comes out of his palm pressed to Dean's chest. Similar light comes from the hand wrapped around Sam's wrist. There's a moment of silence before all three begin screaming. 

Cas' head snaps up to stare at the sky. His blue eyes are overcome with the light of his grace. It pours out of every part of him--his eyes, his mouth, his hands--Dean is screaming and Sam is screaming, the very world is screaming--

Cas rips his hands away from both Sam and Dean. He stumbles towards the sigils burned into the grass, bleeding grace. With one last, gargantuan effort, Cas slams his hands onto the sigils. 

The sound ripped from Cas' throat is primal and painful. It tears through Dean's ears and leaves him weeping. It slices through the molecules of the world, ripping them apart and then glueing them back together. 

The world takes a breath. The world explodes. 

And after all of it, there's Cas, lying beside the sigil. He pushes himself onto his hands and knees, moving as though his bones are turned to dust. He crawls forward, a broken, hopeless thing bent on one thing and one thing only. 

When he reaches Dean, Cas just...collapses. Dean's eyes are closed, his face still. His expression reflects a peace he never found in life. Even from far away, Dean knows that his counterpart is unmistakably dead. Sam, next to him, is exactly the same, and it's at that moment, that Cas throws his head back and unleashes a wail that would crack the fabric of the world. 

Dean's heart is breaking, he can't breathe, Cas' grief and loss slamming into him like a sledgehammer. It's all-encompassing, it's everything, there's no more oxygen or gravity, all that there is just Cas and the knowledge that Dean Winchester, the man he gave up Heaven for, is _gone_\--

\---

Dean blinks. 

The nightmarish scene in front of him has been replaced. His ears ring with the sudden silence and, with the weight of Cas' agony lifted from him, he can finally breathe. He looks around at the quiet scene. He's standing on the edge of a pier in front of a glassy lake. A cooler sits next to him. A soft breeze floats by his face, but the trees don't move with it. 

He hears the flutter of wings behind him and feels the air shift. His skin prickles with anticipation, but he doesn't dare turn around, too afraid of becoming Orpheus and watching his Eurydice disintegrate before his eyes. 

"So you see," Cas says, and now Dean turns to look at him. Cas' gaze is fixed on a distant point in the horizon. Only the small tick at the corner of his jaw betrays the fact that underneath the icy exterior, Cas is a boiling volcano. "The truth in what Zachariah said." 

"It wasn't your fault," Dean says, his chest cracking wide open. After everything he's seen, he's raw. 

A horrible, mirthless smile spreads across Cas' face. "You saw what I did. I..." Cas' face works with emotion before he wrestles his face back into its calm mask. "I betrayed the people that I loved. I walked away from the people that I loved. And then I..." He looks down at his hands, the hands that rested on the other Dean and Sam and felt the life leave them. "I killed the man that I loved. How is any of that not my fault?" 

"Because you weren't left with any other choice." The muscle at the corner of Cas' jaw ticks like a metronome and it's only because Dean's had the experience of watching Cas through death and humanity and everything in between, that he can see the struggle splashed on Cas' face. "All the decisions that you made--you made them trying to do the right thing."

"And when I walked away? When I left Sam...when I left _Dean_ when they could have used me the most? What was my excuse then? Where was the greater good there? What was the right thing then?"

Cas looks at him, eyes icy with defiance, but somewhere underneath the glacier is a desperate plea--_Tell me I did the right thing_ Cas' eyes beg. 

And Dean does. He reaches forward, sliding his fingers over the soft skin of Cas' wrist. Underneath his fingers, Cas' pulse jumps. He looks at Dean with wide, vulnerable eyes. 

"No one could know what would happen. Sometimes you have to be selfish. And when Dean and Sam needed you, when they called you--you came back." 

"It wasn't enough," Cas whispers, his gaze fixed over Dean's shoulder. His voice is thick with remembered pain. "None of it. Even at the end...We tried, but it wasn't enough to lock him away. All of our power, all of our resources and our allies--it wasn't enough." Cas stares down at the place where Dean's fingers touch his skin. "You saw. What I did." 

"What he asked you to do," Dean corrects. 

"He knew that it wasn't enough. Chuck would have broken out eventually and then...There would have been no stopping him. He would have ended everything." Cas inhales. It takes him a few seconds. "It was...His soul. The human soul has immense power. It's like sticking your hand into a thousand nuclear reactors. Two at once-I was unstoppable. It was enough to slam the door on the cage forever. But that much power--" Cas exhales. "It comes with a price." He looks down at his hands. "I felt it. The second that I touched them both, I knew." 

"He was already dying," Dean says softly. "He wanted you to do the right thing. He wanted you to do what it took to win. To make it all mean something. He knew the stakes and at the end--He loved you." 

"And in the end, what did it matter?" Cas' eyes are bleak, hopeless, and finally Dean understands the source of those smiles, understands why there was always a hint of mourning whenever Cas looked at him. To see the face of the man you loved and all the while know how it felt when his life left him-- "In the end, when he was dead, what the _hell_ did it matter?"

"Because you loved him," Dean says fiercely. "Because at the end, that's all that matters." 

"I never..." Cas' voice chokes and Dean understands--Cas never touched the other Dean the way that he wanted, never got to hold Dean in the way that he longed for. Countless of missed opportunities and Cas still feels every one of them. 

It's the memory of that phantom pain that spurs Dean into action. Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's fucked up, maybe Dean will regret offering himself up like the worst kind of consolation prize, but now, with Cas' pain so obvious in front of him, there's no other choice that Dean can see. 

He hauls Cas in close to him and clamps his hand on the side of his neck. Before Cas has the chance to overthink or pull away, Dean's pressed his lips to his. 

It's as good as he remembers. Cas' lips are soft underneath his and when he opens his mouth in a soft gasp of surprise, Dean takes the opportunity presented. At the first touch of his tongue, Cas stiffens, before he melts into Dean's chest. Then, Cas is kissing him back, pressing closer. Dean cards his fingers through Cas' hair and groans when he feels Cas' fingers slide against the hem of his shirt to brush against his skin. 

Dean pulls Cas closer. His hands are feverish things, unable and unwilling to stay at one place for long. He wants to touch everything--the rough stubble on Cas' cheeks, the thick strands of his hair, the vulnerable column of his throat. Cas' hands seem similarly unwilling to stay put--he touches Dean's forehead, his cheeks, the hollow of his throat, the delicate dip of his wrist. Dean melts into Cas' hands. He's never been touched like this before--overwhelming tenderness combined with incendiary passion, and each press of fingers imparts _want_ into Dean's skin--

And then Cas pulls back. His hand is still on the bolt of Dean's jaw as he stares at Dean, eyes wide and a shade fearful. 

"Cas," Dean begins, because he's had time to learn what that look means. "Cas, don't--"

\---

And then Dean wakes in his bed, alone. 

\---

Dean shouts into the void. He screams into it. He hurls insults and pleas, threats and promises. He begs Cas to come back, if only for a moment. He tells Cas what will happen if he doesn't come back. 

And when that doesn't work, he admits defeat and speaks the truth into the blackness of his room. "I miss you," Dean says, not bothering to wonder why the sentiment feels so right. He _knows_ Cas, in a way that he doesn't know anyone else, save for maybe Sam. And Cas knows him in return. Cas has already seen the worst parts of him and still wants some version of him. 

"Please come back," Dean whispers into his pillow. "Cas please. 

\---

Weeks pass and it becomes obvious that Cas isn't coming back. 

When inertia fails, it's time to become an object in motion. 

It's a terrible plan, but it's the only one that Dean has. He gathers all of his strength and resilience, along with his faith and hope. If this doesn't work, then nothing will. 

He checks into the Oread Hotel and takes the elevator up to his eighth floor room. It's a nice place--leave a chocolate on the pillow kind of place. The room he booked has a suite with a Jacuzzi tub, widescreen TV, mini-bar, and a king-sized bed. 

It also has a balcony. 

It's to there that Dean steps, shivering in the chilly night air. He looks down. Eight stories isn't that much, in the grand scheme of high-rises, but from where Dean's standing it's more than enough to get the job done. The lights of passing cars look like fireflies and this high up, the sound from the road is muted. 

"Jesus," Dean whispers. For the first time, he allows himself to feel fear. This is an insane plan and if it doesn't work...Well, then Sam is going to the recipient of his very pathetic life insurance policy and Dean will have an eternity in Heaven to ruminate on his poor decisions. 

The metal railing is cold underneath his hands. Dean is shaking, but his tremors don't come entirely from the cold. "Well Cas, if you're out there, I sure as hell hope you're paying attention." 

Dean waits for a sign, for that familiar rustle, for Cas' voice to break through the silence, but there's nothing. "All right," Dean says, more to himself than anything else. "All right. Here goes nothing." He looks up at the sky. If he peers through the light pollution, he can almost see the stars. "Catch you on the other side Cas." 

He tightens his grip on the railing before he slings himself over to the other side. He holds on for just a moment more, knuckles white from the strain. Crazy, crazy, this is fucking insane, why the fuck is he even thinking about doing this--

Because of Cas. 

With the image of Cas' face in his mind, Dean lets go of the railing and falls. 

~*~*~*~*~*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes**
> 
> 1) Character Death--Cas shows Dean what happened in his original word--The original Sam and Dean died, in part due to actions taken by Cas (that were unavoidable and taken with great regret by Cas). This death is witnessed by the "real" Dean. 
> 
> 2) References to Suicide--Cas leaves and doesn't come back, no matter how hard Dean begs. In an attempt to get Cas to talk to him, Dean jumps off an 8 story building, hoping to goad Cas into coming in to save him.


	5. who can understand it?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel's decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we've come to the conclusion! I never meant for this story to move much past a one-shot, so this is wild for me. Thanks for reading this far, hope that you enjoy!

\---

_The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?--Jeremiah 17:9_

\---

For a single moment, Dean hangs weightless in the air. 

Then, his stomach drops, and with it, his body. 

Wind streaks past his eyes, and tears well at the corners as Dean plummets towards the earth. His ears ring in a shrill scream while regret and terror mingle into the thought of shit fuck I was wrong, and he put his faith in the wrong person, what the _hell_ is gonna happen to Sam, what are his mom and dad gonna think--

And then the world rips open in a single flash of light and rage, thunder pealing on a clear night, a roar splitting the sky even as a force the size of a freight train slams into Dean's body. Dean opens his mouth in a soundless scream, because this isn't what he thought dying would be like, this is somehow _worse_, and if he's going to die, he'd really just like it to be over with--

Dean blinks. Breathes. Breathes again, just to try out the novelty of it. 

He looks around at the hotel room surrounding him, identical to the one that he just jumped out of. He blinks again, just to be sure that he's seeing things correctly. Same bedspread, same flooring, same desk--In fact, the only thing that's _not_ the same is the rumpled and _very_ pissed off angel standing less than five feet away from him. 

"Have you lost your mind?" Castiel hisses. Each word is punctuated with a hard poke of a finger into Dean's sternum. No doubt when he next looks, there will be bruises dotted all over his chest, but he supposes that the dude's entitled. Dean did pull some pretty stupid shit just now, though Cas' showing up is probably just reinforcing negative behavior. 

Not that he's going to tell Cas that. Right now, the expression on Cas' face is next to the dictionary definition of the word _Smite_. 

"After everything that I've done for you...everything that I've..._This_ is what you give to me?" Cas flings his arm with unaccustomed viciousness to the still open window. A cool breeze coyly wisps through the window, rustling the curtains and curling around Dean's bare ankles as a reminder of his guilt. "Of all the reckless, stupid..." Cas looks up towards the ceiling as a low, frustrated cry escapes him. "Don't do that," he says, tone varying between angry and pained. Cas starts pacing across the room, his steps short and choppy. 

The longer he watches Cas, the calmer Dean becomes. It's strange--stress and tension is pouring off of Cas in palpable waves, yet all Dean can feel is an overwhelming sense of peace. 

Cas catches sight of him mid-pace, and apparently the sight of Dean is enough to bring him to a stop. Dean knows what he must look like: bare feet, flannel shirt flapping around his waist, stupid, goofy look plastered across his face. He can see the confusion and irritation flicker across Cas' face, as well as when the confusion bows to irritation. "What?" Cas snaps, shoulders squared in preparation for a fight. 

"Nothing," Dean says, pitching his voice soft and soothing. "I just...It's good to see you." 

Castiel is prepared to rip into him; Dean can tell. It's just his good fortune that he can see the moment in which that train gets derailed. It's an amazing sight, to watch Cas lose his righteous bent. His eyes go wide and surprised, while his mouth drops open uncertainly. He looks caught for a moment, stuck between fondness and rage. It's a surprisingly human look for him, one that Dean wouldn't mind seeing more often. After a long moment, Cas regains the sense of heavenly wrath, but it's lost a step. His eyes flick to Dean more often than not, doubt reflected in the shining blue depths. 

Cas finally comes to some kind of conclusion as he stops in front of Dean, shoulders and jaw set. There's no hint of his previous confusion or hesitation. The humanity is gone and only the angel remains. "You can't keep pulling these, these...stunts, every time you want my attention," Cas says, low and dangerous. He steps close to Dean, shoulders squaring in challenge. "All the work that I've put into making sure that you stayed alive and healthy? All that I've done to make sure that you had a perfect life?" Cas' nostrils flare as he sucks in a quick, harsh breath. "You should show me some respect." 

Something reckless wakes in Dean, brought on by the narrowed slant of Cas' eyes and the lift of his chin. He steps in closer to Cas, ignoring the clear _Back off_ signals emanating from the angel. "Maybe you should do the same. Maybe, instead of taking off and giving me radio silence for _weeks_, you could stop in once in a while." 

This has all the markings of an argument. He and Lisa would have fights like this sometimes, spats that ended in shouts and once, Lisa snatching a pillow off the couch and hurling it at Dean's face. Dean puffs himself up, preparing for the inevitable backlash. 

Which is why, when Cas' face crumples, it takes Dean a moment to react. 

"Cas?" he asks, reaching out to put a soft hand on Cas' shoulder. The fabric of Cas' coat is rough underneath his palm, and underneath that, he can feel the solidity of Cas' arm, the subtle shift of muscle. "Cas, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing," Cas says. He looks up and Dean, but he's not quite finished rearranging his face into stoicism. It allows Dean to see the devastation on Cas' face, the reminders that Cas has been through horrors that Dean can't ever hope to imagine. "I'm fine." 

"Cas," Dean says again, more as a placeholder while he tries to figure out exactly where he went wrong. All he mentioned was that Cas could come by--

And that's it. 

He thinks back to what Cas showed him, with Dean and Sam in the other world, and how one thing always remained true--For whatever reason, Cas always had to leave. Sometimes, though he would never say this to Cas' face, Dean thinks that he could have stayed. Judging from the look on Cas' face, the guilt etched into every line of it, Cas thinks the same. 

And what to say to that? How to assuage the guilt of an eternal being, how to soothe the loss of everything that Cas ever knew? 

Dean can only think of one thing. Words have never been his strong point, but that's fine, because words aren't going to ease this pain. 

He moves forward into Cas' space and Cas is either fine with what's about to happen or Dean's managed to surprise him, because Cas doesn't pull away, even as Dean slides his hand from Cas' shoulder down to his wrist. Dean uses that hold on Cas' wrist to tug him forward, close enough to wrap his free hand around the back of Cas' neck. 

This time when he kisses Cas, he's prepared for the warm curl of pleasure in the pit of his belly. He is, however, not prepared for how the feel of Cas' lips against his can steal the very breath out of his lungs. He's not prepared for the sparks that light in his fingertips and travel through his body, and he's not prepared for the feel of Cas' hands wrapping around his hips and pulling him close. 

He'll never be prepared. He never wants to be prepared. He wants Cas to hit him like a train, every single time. 

Dean opens his mouth and runs his tongue along the swell of Cas' lower lip. Cas opens to him, a soft sound passing from him to Dean. Dean swallows it and presses closer, licking into Cas' mouth. He maps out every bit of Cas he can find, learns his taste. Cas groans into his mouth, the grip on Dean's hips punishing. 

Dean could get addicted to this, the slick push and pull of their lips, the soft grunts Cas releases when Dean's fingernails dig into the back of his neck. Cas kisses with inexperience but makes up for it with enthusiasm, pressing close enough that his chest pushes into Dean's. It's intoxicating and he wants to crawl further into Cas, wants to crowd him up against the wall, wants to find out the shape of his body under the coat, wants to learn the secret places of him, discover what makes him tick. 

Which is why, when Castiel rips himself away from Dean's body, Dean makes the awful little whine that he does. 

His whole front is cold, fingers still tingling from being pressed against Cas' skin. It was like being plugged into the universe and then, without warning, yanked out into the cold void of nothingness. For a second, Dean held the world in his hands and then, without warning, it was yanked away. 

Cas' eyes are wide and wild as he looks at Dean. His thumb brushes over his lower lip and Dean tries not to notice how the digit trembles. "Dean," he begins, his voice low and raspy. "Dean, you can't--"

Dean wants to take a step towards him, but Cas looks an inch away from flight as it is. Dean's afraid that one step towards him might send Cas flapping away, and after Cas' irritation at his previous actions, Dean's not entirely sure that Cas will step into catch him if he tries to jump off of another building. 

"It's not right," Cas says. Dean's heart sinks. Here it is--the reason that he's not good enough, the reason that Cas has decided that he can do better. Dean's not surprised that Cas made the decision; he's surprised that it took him this long to make it. 

To his credit, Cas sees the look on his face and correctly interprets it. "It's not you," he begins, only to flinch backwards at the bitter, hoarse laugh that coughs out of Dean. 

"You're going to give me that shit?" Hurt seeps into his voice and he doesn't bother to try and hide it. It's Cas. Cas already knows everything about him anyway. "You're going to tell me that it's not me, it's you?"

"It is," Cas says, his voice tight. "Dean, what I showed you...Everything that I did...I don't deserve that kind of happiness." 

He believes it, Dean realizes as he peers closer at Cas. An apparent millennia of existence has convinced Cas that he doesn't deserve any kind of peace. 

"Besides Dean, this isn't fair to you," Castiel continues. "You don't--You don't really know me. You don't know everything that I've done." He casts his eyes down. "I couldn't save Dean and Sam and thanks to that..." With an obvious effort, Cas drags his eyes up once more. "You deserve more than a poor excuse for a guardian." 

"Is that what he thought?" 

Castiel recoils at the question. Dean's been so careful about not mentioning the other Dean--himself, he thinks, in an odd way--but it's unavoidable. Cas is carrying the weight of deaths that aren't his to carry. And even though the other version of him was an angry, broken man who was more apt to lash out than to embrace, Dean can't believe that any part of him, any iteration of him, would ever be able to cut Cas out completely. 

So he presses the question, delicately, like placing his finger on the center of a purpling bruise and applying pressure. "Dean. Did he think that you didn't deserve to be happy? That you were a poor excuse for a guardian?" Cas' eyes narrow into thin slits in a clear warning, but Dean presses on. "Did he ever say that to you? When it mattered, when it counted, when there was no reason left to lie--what did he say to you?" 

Cas is obviously preparing some kind of return salvo, but Dean doesn't allow him the luxury of launching it. He continues, daring to take a step forward. "Because let me tell you what I think. We might not be the exact same person, but we're still made up of the same parts. And I think--from the moment he saw you, he was gone on you. I think that he started loving you and he never stopped." 

He and the other Dean might not be identical, but Dean's had the privilege of looking inside Cas' memories so he knows that they're more similar than not. And from the memories and his own experiences, Dean knows one fact--When Dean Winchester loves, he does so unconditionally and for life. The Dean of Cas' memories might have struggled and raged against what he felt, but he _felt_ it. And that seems to be the one thing that Cas can't accept. 

"Dean," he says, swallowing hard. It's such a human gesture, so unthinking, that Dean gravitates closer towards him. "From the first moment we met, I've tried to tell you--I'm not...I'm not _good_, whatever you might think. My motivations have always been selfish in nature, I've manipulated your life--"

"And from where I'm standing, that's nothing but a good thing! Or, I'm sorry, did you think that I _wanted_ my mother to die? My dad to turn into some revenge obsessed alcoholic? My sister-in-law to die? My _brother_?" Dean's voice catches in his throat, the secondhand memories overwhelming him for a moment. "You think I wanted to go to Hell?" He shakes his head, thumbing at the bridge of his nose. "Whatever you're feeling guilty about, don't bring saving my family into that." 

Cas' jaw tightens. He's fighting this, that much is obvious, but _why_ remains a mystery. 

And Dean...If this is going to be the final time that he talks to Cas, he just needs to _know_. 

"Cas." The sound of his name has Cas' head turning to face him. "Just answer me this and then, if you want to leave..." The words thicken and catch in his throat, but Dean forces them out. "If you want to leave after that, then I won't stop you. And I won't do anything stupid to try and get your attention. I'll just...do the regular amount of stupid." 

An impossible, bittersweet smile crosses Cas' face, the kind of smile that looks through a photo album years after an affair ends, the kind of smile that says _goodbye_, and _I'm sorry_, and _please_ all at the same time. It's the kind of smile that already knows what's going to happen, has already spent its time in mourning and come out the other side. It's not a promising smile, but it is a smile, which is more than he had before. Heartened, Dean summons all the balls he ever had to ask, "When you look at me, do you see me? Or...or do you just see him?" 

Cas' face breaks. All the stoicism, the coolness, the aloof mask that he's worn so flawlessly for so long--That splits and Dean sees the Cas that's hidden underneath. His compassion. His grief. His longing. 

"Oh Dean," he breathes, sad and soft and gentle. "Is that what you think?" 

This time it's Cas who steps forward. One hand comes up to cup Dean's cheek with infinite tenderness. "You both share the same soul, it's true, but when I look at you--It's only ever you that I see." 

Dean's fingers wrap around Cas' wrist, keeping Cas' hand trapped against his face; not that Cas seems in any hurry to move it. Cas seems fascinated with the drag of Dean's stubble across the pad of his thumb, the way that Dean's mouth drops open at the hint of pressure. "Your kindness, your selflessness--I would love you in every world, in every universe, until the end of time." 

Dean's heart breaks, cracks right in two, and Cas is left holding the pieces. There's no one better for the job, no one that Dean would trust more with the tiny fragments of himself. 

His kisses Cas then, hands threaded through the hair at the back of Cas' head to keep him still, keep him _there_. This time he doesn't even pretend to be gentle--his hands are greedy, clasping things which pull Cas tighter into him. And Cas isn't a passive participant--No, Cas' hands twist in his shirt and pull at his shoulders, wrapping around his torso. Dean whines as Cas' blunt fingernails scrape over the soft skin at the back of his neck, which affords Cas the opportunity to deepen their kiss, to the point where Dean struggles for breath. 

"You deserve this," Dean pants, dragging his lips over Cas' neck to the bolt of his jaw. "You deserve everything. Please Cas." He draws back to look at Cas and catches his breath. Cas is _debauched_, eyes wild, face flushed, and coat askew. "Please let me." 

Cas brings a shaking hand up to Dean's cheek. He traces the delicate skin under Dean's eye, presses the digit into the apple of Dean's cheek, follows the dip of his upper lip. Cas' breath catches when Dean twists his head to wrap his lips around his thumb, holding the knuckle between his teeth as he flicks his tongue over the pad. Cas draws in a shaky breath before he presses down on Dean's tongue. When he finally withdraws his thumb, it leaves a slick smear across Dean's chin. 

"Just...just be with _me_," Dean begs, before pulling Cas back to him. He doesn't give Cas a chance to protest or comment, seizing Cas' chin between his thumb and fingers and tilting his head at exactly the right angle. Without conscious thought, Dean's hands push at the shoulders of Cas' coat. He hears it hit the floor with a dull thump, and then his hands are working on Cas' suit jacket. It follows the trenchcoat and then there's just the thin barrier of Cas' shirt underneath his hands. 

Dean stutters to a stop, caught unaware by the warmth radiating from Cas' skin. Here, he can feel the shift of Cas' muscles, how a shiver shakes through Cas' body as Dean drags his hand through Cas' hair. Without warning, he's struck by the weight of his actions. This is Cas--Castiel, Angel of the Lord Castiel, Castiel who's been protecting him for as long as he's been alive, Cas who gave up whatever life he had to keep him safe--

"Dean?" Cas' voice rumbles out. Dean can feel it reverberating through his chest. "We don't have to--If you want to stop--"

There's obvious regret in Cas' voice, but there's conviction there as well. Dean could call the whole thing off and Cas would let him, probably kiss him on the forehead for his trouble, and maybe even stay with him until he fell asleep. 

Just as well that Dean doesn't want that.

"No, I want," Dean assures him, dragging his fingertips down the long line of Cas' throat. "Believe me, I want. I just..." He chases the bob of Cas' throat with his fingertips, amazed at the soft noise the touch drags out of Cas. "I don't want you to look at me and see someone else." 

_I don't want you to look at me and see him._

"It's only you Dean," Cas breathes, drawing his fingertips down Dean's face. Dean closes his eyes at the whisper-soft sensations chasing themselves through his body, which is when Cas starts backing him up towards the bed. The backs of Dean's knees hit the edge of the mattress and between that, and the soft pressure of Cas' hands on his shoulders, Dean collapses backwards onto the bed. 

He opens his eyes, dazed and awestruck, to meet Cas' own gaze. Cas looks just as undone, his hair rucked up and messy from Dean's fingers, his tie crooked and dangling off his neck. "If you could see what I see," Cas murmurs, reaching out to rest his hand on Dean's shoulder. "If you could see how your soul shines--how bright it is...It's always been that way, you could outshine the sun--"

"Jesus Cas, come _here_," Dean pleads, his hands pulling at Cas' wrists. 

Cas comes. With one knee on either side of Dean's hips, he settles over him and then--

Dean is helpless under the onslaught of Cas' hands and lips. He arches underneath Cas' touch as Cas sneaks his fingers underneath the hem of his shirt to dance over the skin of his stomach and sides. He cranes his neck backward as Cas' lips drag over his neck, leaving little nips and suckling kisses in his wake. "Cas," he gasps, sightlessly staring at the ceiling as Cas' teeth score over his collarbone. "Oh fuck, Cas." 

"Dean," Cas pants, pulling away from his neck. His fingers pluck at the hem of Dean's shirt, dragging it up several inches. "Dean, can I?" 

"Yeah," Dean says, struggling up to his elbows so that Cas can have an easier job of sliding his t-shirt up and over his head. "Yeah, please." 

There's a brief moment of blindness as Cas drags his shirt off, and then his bare chest is exposed to the chill air of the room. Immediately, he can feel his skin pebble and his nipples harden. Cas makes a small noise of interest and runs his thumb over the taut flesh. 

"Ah, shit Cas," Dean hisses, dropping back onto the mattress as Cas' mouth follows the path of his fingers. To feel Cas' lips circle around the sensitive nub, his hot tongue circling and flicking over his nipple--Dean's hand flies to the back of Cas' head and he twists his fingers in the dark hair. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he chants, as Cas sucks a path over to his other nipple to give it the same treatment. His hips shift restlessly on the bed, thrusting up into nothing in search of friction. 

When Cas draws back, his lips are flushed and red, spit-swollen and slick. "Fuck, look at you," Dean breathes, sweeping his thumb over Cas' lower lip. 

Cas whines, low and desperate in his throat, and then his fingers are working frantically at the buttons of his shirt. Dean reaches up to help him, only to find that his fingers clumsily tangle with Cas'. "Shit, shit, shit," Cas curses against Dean's mouth, and the sound of Cas swearing is so unexpected that Dean has to laugh. 

Between the two of them, Cas' shirt and tie go to join his jacket and coat on the floor of the hotel, and then they're sliding skin to skin. Dean bites back a long groan at the feel of Cas against him, Cas' hands dragging down his sides. For the first time, Dean sloppily rolls his hips forward into Cas'. 

The reaction is instantaneous--Cas' hands clamp down on his sides, hard enough to bruise, while he groans, wanting and needy. Cas' hips jerk forward and Dean wants him so badly he can taste it. 

"Let me," he murmurs, splaying his hand flat over Cas' chest to push him on his back. In one smooth motion, Dean straddles Cas, his hands playing with Cas' belt buckle. "Let me make you feel good," Dean whispers, dragging his lips over the sparse hairs on Cas' chest. 

He loves this, every bit of it--loves the salt taste on his lips as he drags his mouth down Cas' stomach, loves how Cas has to dig his teeth into his lower lip to bite back his cries as Dean sucks marks around his ribs and hips. Loves the way that Cas shifts underneath him, searching for more sensation. Loves Cas' high whine as Dean gives him a taste of his own medicine and closes his lips around Cas' dark nipple. When he uses just a hint of teeth Cas arches up into him, threading fingers through Dean's hair. The bright pain on his scalp has Dean moaning against Cas' scalp, and that's it, he needs Cas naked like yesterday. 

"Cas?" he asks, fingers already working at Cas' belt. "Cas," a little bit sharper when Cas ignores him. 

"Please," Cas answers, lifting his hips in clear permission. His expression is dazed as Dean slides his slacks off his hips, down to his ankles. It's the work of a moment to rid Cas of his socks and shoes, leaving Cas in just a pair of boxers. The evidence of Cas' arousal is plain enough, judging by the tent in his boxers and the growing damp patch on the front of them. Grinning, Dean runs his knuckles over the spot, dropping down to place a kiss just underneath Cas' navel as Cas jolts with the sensation. 

He's murmuring words into Cas' sweat tacky skin, words that he's not even fully cognizant of--_He never did this for you, never saw you like this, he never worshipped you--_

Dean releases those words, those feelings into Cas' skin and then lets them go, because in the end, it doesn't matter. In the end, he doesn't matter, neither of him. All that matters is making sure that Cas feels the same love and devotion that he so thoughtlessly gives out pressed back into his own skin. 

"Gonna make you feel good," Dean whispers, this time loud enough for Cas to hear. "Gonna worship you Cas," and it might be blasphemous to tell an angel that, but it doesn't seem to matter as Cas' eyes roll back in his skull and he whines at the ceiling. 

Dean doesn't waste any time dragging off Cas' boxers, leaving him bare and that...Dean's mouth goes dry as he looks at the miles of tawny skin laid out in front of him like the best kind of feast. "God," he murmurs, running his hands up Cas' calves and thighs to soothe away the flinch that his words cause. 

_Gonna worship you_, he'd said to Cas, and Dean meant it, means it. He gives truth to his words as he kisses up Cas' legs. He feels the tremble of Cas' thighs under his lips, hears the hitched sound of Cas trying to regulate his breathing. When he nudges at Cas' legs, Cas spreads them further, allowing Dean to make a home for himself in the cradle of Cas' hips. When he finally runs his tongue over the leaking head of Cas' cock, the sound that Cas makes is glorious. 

There were blowjobs in college, swift hasty things done in bathrooms or dark hallways at parties, along with rushed handjobs with a hand over the mouth to keep quiet. Dean grew adept at those meetings, at coming quick and hard, wiping up the evidence, and returning to the party, at swallowing the lingering guilt. 

Being with Cas...Being with Cas is like stepping into the sun after a lifetime of being trapped in the darkness. 

With Cas, he takes his time, hollowing his cheeks as he slides down until the head of Cas' cock bumps at the back of his throat. Spittle dribbles out the corner of his mouth, but he uses that to slick the strokes of his fist, covering what his mouth can't. He always thought that blowjobs were a bit degrading, someone else's hands in his hair, someone else's dick in his mouth, but Cas turns it into a benediction, his thumb stroking over the bulge in Dean's cheek, his eyes wide and misty as he looks down at Dean. 

"Beautiful," Cas murmurs, something awestruck in his gaze. "The look of you--Oh Dean, I never--" Dean flicks his tongue around the slit, just to watch Cas' head fall back in pleasure. His own dick presses insistently against the zipper of his jeans, but he can't care about that now, not when Cas' fingers twist in the sheets and his heels dig into the mattress. Dean hooks his arms under Cas' knees, pushing them closer to his chest and opening Cas further up to his hands and tongue. 

"Dean, please, please--" Cas pants, one hand reaching out to card through Dean's hair. He's shaking, thighs trembling around Dean's shoulders. Exhilaration pulses through Dean's veins--a force of nature lies on the bed and Dean gets to witness its implosion and its rebirth. 

"Dean!" Cas cries out, hips bucking up as Dean draws back to suckle at the head of his cock. "Dean, I'm not--I don't--Dean, _please_\--"

Panting, Dean pulls off of Cas' cock. He shivers when it slaps wetly against Cas' heaving stomach and nuzzles at Cas' thigh in order to buy himself a moment to breathe. "I didn't...Dean, please," Cas asks, beckoning with his hands. 

Kissing Cas is like coming home. Cas' arms wind around his shoulders, mouth opening easily to his, and Dean falls into him with no hope of ever returning. Cas is the best kind of infection, the kind that settles in his body and never leaves, and Dean is perfectly happy to leave it there. 

"I never thought...I never dreamed..." Cas murmurs against Dean's mouth, hands stroking over his shoulders, down his spine, and then up through his hair. "I didn't know that it would be like that," Cas finally murmurs, wrapping a single leg around Dean's waist. 

At that, Dean draws back, tracing over the line of Cas' eyebrow. "Cas, you've never--" He lets himself trail off, unwilling to believe--He can swallow the fact that Dean and Cas never, because there were enough issues between the two of them to sink a barge. But to never--

"Once," Cas says shortly, something behind his eyes shuttering closed. "It wasn't a pleasant experience." 

"I'm sorry," Dean murmurs, kissing along Cas' cheek as a way to bring Cas' attention back to him and away from the shadows of his past. "You deserve the best. You deserve everything." 

"Dean, please," Cas says, his hands pushing at the waistband of Dean's jeans. "Please let me see you." 

"Shit yeah," Dean says, flicking his belt buckle open with one hand. Together, he and Cas slide his jeans off his ass and down his legs. A shimmy of his legs and his jeans hit the ground. From there, it's a simple matter to shove his boxers down and then he and Cas are sliding together, skin on skin, Dean's cock smearing across the surface of Cas' hip. 

Dean crashes his mouth into Cas', propping himself up on his elbows so that he can frame Cas' face with his hands. Cas kisses him back, hands sweeping over his sides to rest just above the swell of his ass. 

"Cas," Dean mutters, biting along Cas' jaw. "Cas, I want..." He stops, embarrassment flushing through him for a quick moment before he remembers--This is Cas. Cas who's been watching over him his entire life, Cas who has seen him at his worst and lowest and who's still, inexplicably, _here_. Cas won't ever judge him. 

"What Dean?" Cas asks, brushing Dean's sweat-damp hair away from his forehead. "Ask me anything and I'll give it to you." 

"One, you might want to be careful of making promises like that. B, I want...I want you inside me." The words leave Dean in a quick rush. 

It only takes Cas a moment to decipher Dean's garbling of his desires. Dean knows the moment when Cas does as a full-body shudder moves through him. "Are you sure?" Cas asks, one hand stroking over Dean's hair. "We don't have to--" 

Dean cuts him off with a palm over his mouth. "Cas," Dean says, gathering confidence when he takes note of Cas' blown-out pupils and his quick, excited breaths. "I want you to fuck me." 

The words set off an immediate reaction in Cas. His eyes darken and in one graceful motion he rolls to pin Dean underneath him. Dean arches up against him, but Cas' iron grip keeps him immobile. A happy sigh leaves Dean when he realizes that all he has to do is just lie back and take whatever Cas wants to give him. 

And it's a lot, what Cas wants to give him. Cas gives him teeth and tongue, licking down his chest, to his stomach, to his hips. When Cas' lips ghost over the head of his dick, Dean thinks that he might actually die. 

"Cas, stop," Dean has to grit out after Cas spends several long, luxurious licks over his shaft. "I don't...If you keep on then this is going to be over a hell of a lot faster than I want it to be." 

Cas smiles at him, unselfconscious and genuine, and Dean's heart cracks at the sight. To be able to make Cas look like that, like he's forgotten all the reasons that he should be grieving--A warm glow spreads through Dean, one that has nothing to do with Cas' breath ghosting along his dick. 

"Do you have any lubrication?" Cas asks, replacing his mouth with a loose fist. It's enough stimulation to make Dean want to crawl out of his skin, but not enough to give any real relief. He has to fight the urge to arch upwards, but he can't stop the small rolls of his hips upward into Cas' hand. 

"Bag," Dean grits out. "Front pocket." He watches Cas easily roll of the bed, moving with an unnatural grace. It's only a moment that he's gone before he returns, stretching over Dean like he wants to press every inch of his body against Dean's. 

Dean's never had someone else do this to him before, only done it to himself in rare fits of inspiration when there was no chance of anyone walking in on him. He can't help but flinch at the touch of Cas' slick fingers trailing over his balls, to the smooth stretch of skin behind them. "Relax," Cas says, kissing along Dean's jaw. "Just relax for me." 

The tip of Cas' finger rubs over his hole, the slightest hint of pressure. "Relax," Cas orders, sucking a dark mark in the skin of Dean's neck. Helpless to do anything but obey, Dean exhales. That's when Cas slides the tip of his finger inside him. 

"This all right?" Cas asks, waiting for Dean to loosen around the intrusion. 

"It's..." Cas' finger slides in further and Dean's back arches, his muscles long gone out of his control. "Oh fuck Cas," Dean whines. His pitch increases when Cas stills. "No, fuck, I didn't mean for you to stop." 

"Good." Cas' voice is low and pleased. It trickles over Dean like sweet, aged whiskey and for the next few moments, Dean floats on a sea of sensation. One finger becomes two, then three, and Dean doesn't even notice the burn anymore, not when Cas' fingers glide so smoothly in him, scissoring and stretching him. 

When Cas presses on his prostate, a choked off, sharp cry leaves Dean's lips. It doesn't sound like any noise that he's ever made before, and if it were anyone else with him other than Cas, Dean would feel ashamed. As it is, he twists his fingers in the sheets hard enough to feel the fabric tearing underneath his nails, and presses back into the insistent push of Cas' fingers. 

"Cas, come on," he says, in a voice that sounds too shredded to belong to him. "I can't...Fuck me," finally comes out of his mouth, a ragged, desperate plea. 

Cas leans up to kiss him, hard and needy, as he pulls his fingers out of Dean. Dean whines at the feeling, but stops when Cas rears back. 

His mouth goes dry at the look in Cas' eyes, dark and needy. This is it, the point of no return, the last moment when he could say no. 

"Do it," he whispers, surprised at the sheer desperation in his voice. "Come on Cas. Want to feel you." 

That seems to do the trick--Cas breathes out in a low sigh, settling back on his heels as he reaches for the lube. He's just ready to squirt some on his fingers before Dean sits up. "Let me?" he asks. Cas' eyes flick to his face and his outstretched hand. Something passes over his face, too swift and complicated to decipher, and then the lube hits Dean's fingers, cold and slick, and he starts thinking about other things. 

At the touch of Dean's hand, Cas' eyes flutter shut, his head lolling backwards as he hisses softly through his teeth. Dean strokes up and down Cas' cock slowly, savoring the feel of the skin over steel, but enjoying the soft, helpless look of pleasure on Cas' slack face more. 

After just a few strokes, Cas' fingers close around Dean's wrist, halting his movements. "Stop," Cas tells him, voice oddly tight. His eyes open and he looks down at Dean, a faint blush dusting across his cheeks. "I'm not...I won't last if you keep that up," he says, apologetic. 

"Jesus," Dean whispers, grinning as he releases Cas and flops back onto the bed. He's feeling decadent, giddy, and he keeps his eyes on Cas as he deliberately spreads his legs. 

"Oh Dean," Cas murmurs, something dark and dangerous in his voice, even as his eyes devour him. "Dean." 

In a few short movements, Cas hooks Dean's knees over his elbows, bending him forward and spreading his legs far enough apart that Dean feels the burn. That temporary ache fades when Cas presses the tip of his cock to his entrance. 

"Please, please, please," Dean says, the word falling from his lips as Cas presses forward, blunt pressure at his hole until the muscle gives way. 

The gasp catches in Dean's throat, and that's where it stays, through the long slide of Cas pressing in until his hips rest snugly against Dean's ass. It stays through the long moment of Cas stilling above him, muscles trembling with a desperate need for _something_, half-strangled whimpers and moans smothered between Cas' clamped jaws before they ever have a chance to reach fruition. 

Cas drops down, props himself up on his elbows as he presses his forehead into Dean's collarbone. "Dean," he grits out, his already low voice gone like gravel, absolutely _wrecked_, and all that was because of Dean..."Dean, can I...?"

"Move, please," Dean says, finally releasing his gasp, only for it to disappear in the slow glide of Cas' dick inside him. 

It takes Cas a moment to set a rhythm that's good for the both of them, his hips stuttering against Dean's ass, but once he finds it, he keeps it, steady as a metronome in and out of Dean. Soon enough, the hotel room is filled with the sound of skin against skin, their pants and gasps, the slick sound of Cas moving in him. 

Dean wraps his arms around Cas' shoulders and his legs around Cas' waist. He wants to pull himself closer to Cas, would crawl inside Cas if he could. He lifts his chin in a silent request for a kiss, one that Cas obliges. It's not a kiss so much as it is their mouths brushing against each other, Dean stealing the pants straight from Cas' lungs. Cas' teeth score over Dean's lips and chin, fingers digging into Dean's shoulders. 

"Cas," Dean moans, the pleasure zinging through his body like an electrical wire. He's alight from the inside out, each nerve ending firing and exploding until he can't see, can't hear, can't even think. Cas is all that remains, Cas' cock moving in him, Cas' hands on him, Cas' mouth against him. "Oh fuck Cas." 

"Dean," Cas responds, dipping his head to kiss him in a furious clash of teeth and tongues. "Dean, you're so...so beautiful. Oh, the look of you." He sounds wondrous, like Dean's showing him the secrets of the universe, even as Cas' hips snap up against him. 

_He never got to see this_, Dean thinks, his fingers digging into Cas' shoulders. _That poor bastard never got to see Cas like this, feel Cas like this_. He spares a second to mourn for that poor, dead Dean, the one who never got to see what Cas' face looks like screwed up in concentration, the way that his teeth worry his bottom lip. 

"You're perfect," Dean says, awed as if he just realized it, even though he's known it for a while now. "So fucking perfect." 

Cas' eyes lock on his as his mouth opens in a helpless cry of pleasure. His hips stutter against Dean's ass, just before Dean feels the warm splash of Cas' release inside him. "So fucking perfect," Dean whispers, running his hands through Cas' hair, gentling him through the aftershocks. He strokes down Cas' back, over the wings of his shoulders, feeling the tremor in Cas' muscles as he comes down. 

It's uncomfortable when Cas slips out, but Dean doesn't concentrate on that for long. He can't, not when Cas slides down his body to take his still hard cock in his mouth, swallowing him down to the root with no warning. Dean arches up, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling as he chants, "Oh fuck Cas, Cas, fuck, fuck, fuck--" Cas slips two fingers into him, the way eased by lube and Cas' come, and starts to thrust. It only takes Cas several tries before he's found Dean's prostate and he uses that knowledge to play Dean like a particularly well-tuned fiddle. 

"Cas, Cas, I'm gonna, gonna--" That's all the warning that Dean manages before he's coming into Cas' mouth, hips thrusting up into the warm, wet heat. Cas never hesitates, never pulls back. He keeps working over Dean until Dean's whimpering with over-sensitivity. 

"Come here, come here," Dean practically begs, limp hands reaching up for Cas, and miracle of miracle, Cas comes to him. 

Cas comes to him in a flurry of limbs and lips, his touch brushing over Dean until Dean's drunk with it. He kisses what little of Cas he can reach, relaxing into the mattress as Cas' fingers sooth over his chest and face. Through his half-conscious state, Dean slowly becomes aware of the words Cas presses into his skin with every brush of his lips. 

"Thank you," Cas whispers, kissing at Dean's temple. "Thank you," at his chin. "Thank you," over his fluttering pulse. "Thank you," over the furious beat of his heart. 

"Cas," is all that Dean can think to say, because that encompasses everything--_thank you_ and _you're perfect_ and probably even _I love you_ all rolled into three letters, a single syllable that Dean can breathe out, easy as exhaling, twice as natural as blinking. "Cas." 

Somehow, Dean's body ends up under the comforter. He stretches against sheets that feel silken against his bare skin, luxuriating in the feel of them. Cas ends up beside him, propped up on one elbow. His hand splays possessively over Dean's chest, fingertips brushing the beat of his heart. 

_Take it_, Dean thinks, still a little delirious from the high of orgasm. _It's yours anyway._

"Sleep," Cas murmurs, something fond and complicated in his face and voice. "I'll watch over you." 

"You don't..." Dean trails off, because he's not sure what he would say--Sleep? Cuddle? 

Sadness overtakes Cas' expression, just for a moment. "I'm an angel," he says softly, stroking his thumb over Dean's skin. "I don't sleep." 

"You should try it sometime," Dean says, pushing aside the small worry nagging at the back of his mind. He tries, and fails, to suppress a yawn. "It's pretty swell." 

"Sleep," is all Cas says in reply. "I'll be watching over you." 

Dean curls closer to Cas' body, eyes already closing. Peace settles heavy in his limbs and quiets his racing mind. He slings an arm over Cas' waist, pulling him closer. After a moment, Cas relaxes, reaching out with a foot to tangle his limbs with Dean's. 

_Wish it could be like this forever_, Dean thinks, fogginess descending on his brain. _Wish that we could stay like this. No angels, no demons, just us._

With the scent of Cas in his head, the feel of Cas' hands on him, and the memory of their activities lingering in his body, Dean sleeps. 

\---

When he wakes in the morning, Cas is gone.

\---

Dean tries, of course he does. He wakes the next morning, eyelids still heavy with the kind of sleep that comes from staying in a bed not his own. It's a good bed, and it was a good sleep, but it's somehow not enough. Or maybe that was just his body telling him to beware, that while he was resting, the world had gone and shifted itself without his permission. 

He stretches without opening his eyes and his fingers encounter nothing but empty bedsheets, long gone cold. 

He knows then, in the pit of his stomach, what's happened, but he still goes through the motions. Still opens his eyes, a vague panic racing through him as he looks around the room. "Cas?" he calls, still tangled in the sheets, left behind like an unwelcome reminder. "Cas, you here?"

A suffocating silence is his only answer, but Dean persists. He slings himself out of bed, the hardwood floor cold against his bare feet. He looks through the living room, through the bathroom. It's a short journey, and by the end of it, all he's discovered is what he's already known since he first opened his eyes: Cas is gone. 

"Cas?" Dean calls, wrapping the hotel's robe around his bare skin. Even through the comfortable terrycloth, he shivers. "Castiel?" he tries again, knowing all the while that it's futile. 

_If you want to leave, I won't stop you_. That had been what he'd said, and Dean had foolishly thought that Cas had chosen differently. 

He sinks into one of the chairs. His eyes are constantly drawn to the bed, the bed where Cas had laid him out, the bed where he'd pulled Cas down, the bed where they'd...The sparkling white sheets are crumpled after a night of use. That, and the lingering ache in Dean's muscles, are the only pieces of evidence that he can point to and say _This was real. For just a moment, I had this._

He'd really thought that Cas would stay. 

After a few minutes pass, Dean forces himself upright and into the shower. The water pressure is amazing, to die for, but he sluices last night off of him like a chore, and doesn't pay any attention to the amenities. Once out of the shower, he dresses in his old clothes, pulling them on like armor. His boots are last, and he sits on the bed for them. 

It was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. In what world would Cas ever stay with him? In what fantasy land would a creature like Cas ever tether himself to a screw-up like Dean Winchester? 

Last night was a dream--beautiful and fleeting, flowing through his hands like so many grains of sand in an hourglass. And once it was gone...Well, you can't hold onto dreams, no matter how good. 

Dean checks the room to make sure that he hasn't left anything behind, and makes his way to elevator so that he can check out. He has work the next morning. 

It's fine. 

\---

His life returns to normal. 

He goes to work, continues to build his client base, is even featured in a few magazines and newspaper articles. Over the next few months, he takes more and more of an administrative role, because that's what's required. He misses the grunt work sometimes, misses burying his hands in a car's guts and sifting through wires and bolts until he finds the problem, but, as Bobby keeps on reminding him, he has employees to do that for him. What he doesn't have is someone to control the finances and marketing, someone to book new clients and give interviews, or someone to liaison with various scrapyards and dealerships to get the necessary parts. 

Sometimes Sam will look at him, his eyes heavy with insinuation, and Dean will have to shrug. They don't really talk about it, the forbidden knowledge lurking in both of their heads. Angels, demons...he and Sam share the burden, but they don't talk about it. What is there to say? Angels and demons exist, Dean knew an angel, and now the angel's gone. 

Open and shut. 

Six months after the break-up that wasn't, his mother delicately asks him if he's seeing someone. If he has any plans to meet someone. She means well, Dean knows she does, but the question rankles as he grits his teeth and says, No, he's not seeing anyone and he doesn't really have any plans to see someone. If any of that changes, his mother will be the first to know. 

Sometimes, he thinks that he sees a glimpse of Cas. He'll see the tails of his coat flipping around the corner, catch the shock of his dark hair in the crowd, see a flash of blue eyes. But then he blinks and reality ensues, and he'll be standing alone in the middle of the grocery store, looking like a creep. Or worse, looking like a lost little puppy. 

Dean trains himself to ignore those sightings. In the end, it hurts a little less and it makes forgetting a little easier. 

And life moves on. Dean goes out with his friends, he goes to dinner at his parent's house, he spends time with Sam and Jess and teases Jess about when she's going to make an honest man out of his brother. Birthdays and anniversaries pass, and Dean participates in them all. He feels obligated somehow, knowing that this life is a gift. That it was never guaranteed, that it probably wasn't intended to be like this. That every breath he takes is a gift to him, from Castiel. 

And it's fine. 

\---

Eight months have passed since the last time he saw Cas. Almost a year. The sting of rejection has almost faded, and Dean can now go almost an entire week without even thinking about Cas. Not a great milestone to be proud of but Dean embraces the little victories of life. 

He's sitting at his kitchen table one evening, going over several invoices from the garage. Sam, Charlie, and Bobby have all nagged at him for bringing work home with him, but what the hell. It's not like he has anything else to do while he's there, other than make a dinner that will yield too many leftovers and binge watch trash TV until he passes out on his couch. At least this way he's being productive with his lack of a social life. 

The knock on the door comes as a surprise. Dean's looks suspiciously at the door as he flicks through various appointments. No one should be at his door--he's not expecting any packages, hasn't ordered food, and hasn't invited anyone over. The knock sounds again, a little more insistent. 

Rolling his eyes, Dean gets up from the table and walks to his front door. Probably some delivery that got misdirected. Maybe he'll get a free pizza out of the deal. 

The knock sounds a third time, just as Dean reaches the door. "All right, all right," he snarls, flipping the deadbolt and wrenching open the door. "Hold your damn--"

Whatever he was going to say next dies on his lips as he looks at the person on the other side of the door. 

"Hello Dean," Cas says, just before his knees buckle and he pitches towards the ground.

\---

Dean almost doesn't catch him. 

He's frozen in shock and it takes him a nanosecond too long to move forward, which means that Cas' face almost crashes into the floor. He manages to grab Cas under the arms before that happens and haul him back to his feet, but he can't save Cas' elbow, which slams into the doorjamb, or Cas' knee, which smashes into the floor. Dean echoes Cas' pained hiss before he hefts Cas back up into a roughly standing position. One hand on Cas' shoulder keeps Cas pinned against the wall, even as Cas threatens to slump forward. 

"What the hell Cas?" Dean hisses, keeping his hand on Cas' shoulder until he determines that Cas is able to keep himself upright. "What the hell are you doing here?" 

Cas blinks, like there's a delay in his processing system. That pause gives Dean a second to look at his appearance--his skin, paler than it was, his ruffled hair, the dullness of his eyes, the stubble on his jaw, the wrinkles in his suit. The stain at his shirt collar. The aura of exhaustion clinging to him like a particularly determined scent. 

"Are you ok?" Dean asks, his righteous anger forgotten in the moment. "You look...you just look..."

"Human?" Cas asks with a wry grin. 

\---

The word punches through Dean like a fist made of titanium.

_Human._

Cas isn't...He...Cas is ephemeral, Cas is thunder and lightning, the swift flare of ozone before a storm, the gathering clouds of a hurricane. Cas is eternal, like the waves crashing up on the beach. Cas was there to watch the first fish crawl up out of the sea, and Cas is supposed to be there to watch the world crumple in on itself. Cas isn't...

Dean takes in the tremble of Cas' limbs, the faint flutter of his eyelids, the shallowness of his breaths. Dark circles lurk underneath his eyes. 

Cas is...

"Cas," Dean whispers, reaching out and pressing his thumb into the apple of Cas' cheek. The skin underneath the pad of his finger is cooler than he's accustomed to--Cas has always burned hot, but now he's cooled down to tepid. 

"Here." Cas fumbles at the collar of his shirt. The once pristine white is stained yellow, from dirt and probably sweat. A few drops of red fleck at the edges and Dean's stomach drops when he recognizes blood spatters. 

Cas unbuttons the first button of his shirt, revealing a thick golden chain around his neck. Dean's mouth goes dry as he watches Cas pull out a small glass pendant. It looks innocuous enough, were it not for the swirling white-blue light writhing against the confines of the glass. 

He has no idea what it is he's watching, but it feels like Cas is showing him the proverbial red button, like someone just left out the state secrets and spoilers to every MCU movie known to man. "Cas, what is that?" 

"My grace," Cas answers, as painfully blunt and honest as always. 

Dean's eyes flick back and forth between the pendant and Cas' face. "I can't...I'm not..."

"I want you to have it," Cas says, offering the pendant to Dean. "There's no one else that I would trust with it." 

Dean reaches out. His trembling fingers close around the pendant and then he sees--

_Cas looking down at a wickedly sharp syringe nestled in thick black velvet. He can feel Cas' fear warring with his resolution. The stubbornness wins out as Cas picks up the syringe, but it's not enough to drown out the fear as he settles his fingers into the grooves of the syringe and brings it up to his neck. The tip of the syringe scratches over the skin of his neck, and Cas doesn't quite repress the shiver. He knows that there's no coming back from this, no do-over. Once he plunges the syringe into his neck, he assumes all the risks of mortality. _

_Castiel knows the risks--He could very easily die from extracting his grace. Without his grace to keep his body running, there's an extreme likelihood of his organs failing, his nervous system shutting down...Dean's face flashes through his memories--The Dean of this world, pure and whole, still full of hope and love--And his one wish. Such a simple wish, such an easy desire..._

I want to stay like this. Just the two of us. No angels, no demons. Just us.

_Such an easy wish, but not one that can be fulfilled. Cas' desire wells up until it's almost bursting--His yearning for normalcy, his need to protect, but fiercer than that, his need to belong. His longing for a home, for a family._

_His love._

_Steeling himself, Castiel takes a deep breath before he plunges the syringe into the soft skin of his neck. _

_Pain, bright and all-encompassing, like nothing he's ever felt explodes through him, and it's all that he can do to keep the syringe in his hand, to keep on pushing--_

Dean manages not to drop the pendant, but it's a near thing. Several inches of the chain slip through his fingers until he manages to catch it. He stares at the swirling mist inside the glass, willing his heartbeat to return to normal. 

"So that's it?" Dean asks. He swallows, willing his voice to return to normal. "You just...you yank this out and now you're..."

"Human. Or as close to it as a thing like I can be." Cas shrugs. "I still have a small amount of grace left. Not enough to fly or heal...enough for...I suppose you would call them 'party tricks'. But I'm no longer an angel." For the first time, Cas' face reflects uncertainty. "I didn't...I understand that you might be angry--"

"I was angry because you lit out the morning after and you didn't leave me a note," Dean says faintly. The pendant still dangles from the chain. Hesitantly, Dean brushes a finger against the glass, halfway anticipating a flashback like the one he had before. It appears that that was a one-time only occurrence, and he breathes a sigh of relief. "I'm not...Cas, why?" 

"It was a cowardly thing to do," Cas replies, deliberately misinterpreting Dean's question. "I didn't want to leave like that, but I knew...There was always a chance that I wouldn't survive. And if that were the case..." Cas licks at his lips before he meets Dean's eyes. "I didn't want to give you any false hope. And I didn't...I'm not strong enough to say goodbye to you. Not again." 

"Can you take it back?" 

Cas flinches at the question, delivered in a hoarse whisper. His eyes rest on the grace for a long moment before he looks back at Dean. "It's possible. If the circumstances were dire enough, I might be able to. But taking grace into what is essentially a mortal body...I most likely wouldn't survive the attempt." He swallows again, hesitation in his voice and mannerisms as he asks, "Is that what you want?"

"No!" Dean jerks the grace closer to his chest, instinctively shielding it with his free hand. "Jesus, I don't want you to _die_. But Cas...I ain't worth..." He looks helplessly at Cas. "You were an angel. You know, wings, power, smiting, immortal--the whole shebang. And I'm just...This is it." Dean gestures to himself--Hair that's already starting to thin out at the temples, unshaven face, shirt with a grease stain where he dropped a fry weeks ago and the stain never quite came out, softening middle that he knows is only going to get worse not better, bowed legs wide enough to drive a truck through. "I'm not going to get any better than this." 

"Dean Winchester." Cas might not be in full possession of his grace anymore, but his voice could still command armies. He steps forward, all deadly intent and quiet focus. Somehow, Dean manages to hold his ground. "When are you going to realize that for me, you have always been enough? That I don't want anything other than this?" 

Cas' eyes travel over Dean's body and heat blossoms in their wake. Dean's never felt so stripped by a single glance before in his life. "You have always been more than enough for me. Please don't belittle my choices by disparaging yourself." 

"But...humanity," Dean tries, because Cas has to _see_. "We're not...We're petty and cruel, and we smell bad in the mornings, and we make funny noises, and we need to sleep and piss and--"

"And I made this choice of my own free will." Cas' eyes reflect the same angelic stubbornness that he always had. "That's what it was always about--the freedom to make choices and accept the consequences." 

Cas steps forward and places a careful hand on Dean's cheek. Despite the frustration, anger, and worry thrumming through his body, Dean leans into the touch. He turns his face into Cas' palm and presses his lips to the lifeline cutting through the skin. Something loosens and releases in his chest as Cas strokes his thumb over his cheek. 

"If you want me to go," Cas' voice falters on the last word, but he rallies and continues, "then I will leave. I will walk away and never darken your doorstep again. But please. Respect my choices. I never...I never had a chance before. To just _live_. To have the luxury of growing old with the people that I had chosen to love. That choice was taken from me. And to have it before me again...I've lived a very long time Dean. Trust me when I say that second chances very rarely come about." 

The skin of Cas' wrist is smooth underneath his lips. Dean presses his lips to the pulse, feels it kick up a notch under his touch. 

Second chances. By his count, he and Cas are on their fourth. 

The universe is many things, but it's not usually either kind or forgiving. 

Dean has been given a blessed life already. Everything that he could want has been delivered into his hands. 

But he's greedy. He wants more. 

He wants Cas. 

"Stay," Dean murmurs, slanting his eyes to meet Cas'. He watches the relief bleed through Cas' face, the slowly-spreading happiness on his face. When Cas leans into him, Dean's arms come around his shoulders, pulling him closer. He can feel the beating of Cas' heart, in time with his. 

A warm glow spreads through Dean. When he first met Cas, he thought that it was Cas' power, his grace, that was the source of that particular heat. But now he knows better--this is just Cas. Whatever Cas is now--he's the only one who's ever looked at Dean and seen him, really seen him. All of him, the good and bad, the parts that he tries to keep hidden as well as the parts that he flaunts. 

"I'm making lasagna for dinner," Dean says, burying his nose in Cas' hair. 

Lasagna. Meat, and cheese, and noodles, made into a greater part. 

"You could help if you want. I could teach you." 

Such a simple thing, making dinner together. 

Cas glances up at him. A small smile dashes around his face. 

"I'd like that," Cas says, sliding his hand down Dean's arm until he tangles their fingers together. Dean squeezes Cas' hand, feels the strength of his grip. It's a good hand, a capable hand. It's a hand that he could see himself holding for quite a few years. 

"Come on then," Dean says, tugging at Cas' hand. "And change out of those clothes. Put something more comfortable on." 

Lasagna. Smaller parts, combined together to make something larger and better. 

It's such a small thing, such a human thing, making dinner together. 

It's a good start.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and your encouragement and kindness! 
> 
> As always, if you want to yell at me on tumblr, you can find me [ here](https://dothwrites.tumblr.com/). I'm sarcastic and weird, but also a little weird. 
> 
> Catch you next time. 
> 
> <3 doth


	6. on angel's wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always for reading. <3

\---

_On angel's wings, love flew in.--Renee Dyer_

\---

_ **epilogue** _

"Cas, come on. We're going to be late unless you get a move on."

From the bowels of the house, Dean hears the grumbling which means that Cas is on his way, but still feels the need to show his displeasure about being hurried along. Dean fights back his smile. He's supposed to be irritated that Cas is going to make them late, again.

Of course, when Cas comes into the living room dressed in a navy button down and dark jeans that hug his ass and hips in just the right way, it's difficult to be angry.

A tie dangles from the collar of Cas' shirt and Dean rolls his eyes. No matter how many times he tells Cas that a tie isn't required for every gathering, Cas insists. Old habits die hard, he supposes.

"Come here," he grumps, hiding his affection beneath a healthy layer of irritation.

Cas obliges him as he steps in close enough that he can reach out and hook his fingers in Dean's belt loops. He tilts his chin up towards the ceiling, baring his throat. The sight of that long column, bare for the taking, does things to Dean. Unfortunately, it's nothing that he can indulge in at the moment. But later, when they get back home...

"Dean," Cas says, never looking down from the ceiling. "You were the one complaining that we were going to be late."

"Shut up," Dean snips, ignoring the fact that Cas is, as usual, correct. "Learn how to tie a tie if you want to wear them so bad."

It's an old argument, worn thin and comfortable like a favorite shirt, so Cas doesn't answer. His grip gets a little tighter on Dean's hips, his thumb slipping under his shirt to press against his skin.

Dean finishes, drawing the knot close to the hollow of Cas' throat. He swallows as he looks at Cas and takes in the blind trust involved in him leaving himself open and vulnerable.

If Cas turns just the right way, Dean knows that he would see the pale white knot of scar tissue where Cas plunged the needle into his own skin as he pulled out his grace.

It's been two years since Cas showed up on his door. Two years of laughter, of bickering, of fighting, of reconciling. Two years of love.

Dean had caught up to Charlie that first week and pulled her aside. "So you know how you're in a bunch of really shady shit on the side and we pretend not to know?" was his conversation starter, which, in retrospect, he could have picked a better one. "I need you to do some of that really shady shit and you're not allowed to ask why or what it's for, or anything like that. I'll pay you."

It's a mark of how much Charlie loves him that she didn't just sock him in the jaw and call it quits, but Charlie's a ride or die kind of friend and she came through. A week later, she delivered a birth certificate, social security card, driver's license, even a passport for one Cas Novak. The license and the passport featured the same picture of Cas, looking rumpled and grumpy, staring into the camera as though it had done him some great injustice.

A week after that and Cas had a part-time job at the local library. He's managed to stretch that into a full-time job, and it gives Dean no small joy to tell his friends _I'm dating a sexy librarian_. For his part, Cas rolls his eyes and ignores him. He might squint a little at the book's call number before he turns around to shelve a book.

Cas squints. In a few years, he's going to need glasses.

The mundane things, the human things--long, hot showers, indulgent breakfasts in bed, lost socks, and bickering over dinner--they're the things to keep them both grounded. They're the things that Dean is the most grateful for.

Sometimes he'll catch Cas staring into nothing, a faraway look on his face as he strokes over the small knot of tissue just underneath the bolt of his jaw. Dean's learned through trial and error to leave Cas alone during these times. Cas neither wants company nor needs consoling; Dean understands that Cas is mourning an essential part of him that's gone and isn't coming back.

Cas swears that he regrets nothing. His eyes are wide and earnest as he tells Dean that there's no place he'd rather be than right beside him, and Dean chooses to take his word for it. Has to take his word.

He keeps Cas' grace in a small box in the drawer of his nightstand. Cas instructed him how to make the box, told him what to carve into the lid to keep it safe. Sometimes, Dean can almost forget it's there, like he can almost forget the sigils that are burned into their wall, the devil's traps stationed around their windows and doors, the fact that when Cas got enough of his strength back, he went around Dean's house, white-faced with determination, a good pint of his blood in the bowl in his hands. He'd drawn symbol after symbol on the walls, Dean following close behind just in case Cas passed out. They hide the wardings with some strategically placed artwork that Dean prays is never closely examined, just like he prays that Sam never really looks too close at the back of the pictures that Dean gave him. Cas' blood adorns those as well, making Sam's house another safe haven.

"Just in case," Cas insisted, slicing into his forearm with a wickedly sharp knife before Dean could stop him. "I trust Uriel to keep the angels in line, and without Azazel, I don't think that the demons are organized enough to mount an attack, but I won't leave yours or Sam's safety to chance."

And what could Dean say to that?

Now he and Cas are in the Impala, on their way to Sam's engagement party. Sam, who took a good, hard look at Cas when Dean first brought him around, but then said nothing. He's continued to say nothing, even as Dean and Cas have carved places into their lives for each other, and Dean knows that Sam will continue to say nothing, right up until the moment that he dies.

Plus, Sam and Cas are the best of nerd-buddies, who always team up on their significant others during trivia nights (it's also super unfair since Cas has pretty much all of human history floating in his head) and then refuse to share their prizes. Assholes.

"You'll want to bring your umbrella," Cas says suddenly. "It'll rain later tonight."

Dean doesn't question him. Cas had said that there would be 'party tricks'. So far it comes in the form of being able to accurately predict the weather, within several minutes and having an uncannily good ability at predicting games of chance. One day, Dean is going to take them both to Vegas and they'll make it big. Until then, he'll just enjoy the little perks that come from having a boyfriend strong enough to lift one end of their couch up without straining.

"Can't believe that they're finally engaged," Dean says as a way to break the silence. "There for a while, I thought that it was never going to happen."

Cas hums. One of his hands inches across the seat until it rests on Dean's knee. "That's why we have faith," he says. When Dean glances over at him, Cas smiles. The secrets to the world are held in that wide, gummy grin, and Dean could spend the rest of his life falling inside of it. "Watch the road when you're driving please," Cas chides, squeezing his thigh in a soft remonstrance.

Dean turns his eyes back to the road. He might not have a guardian angel anymore, but he has something better.

He has Cas. And Cas has him.

And in the end, that's all that matters.

~*~*~*~*~*

_ **postscript** _

_Dean and Castiel carve a life out together. He watches them live and laugh and love. He watches them fight, watches them hurt each other. Watches how they soothe the hurts away, how they continually show each other the depths of their emotions. He watches them grow old._

_"You're getting to be just as bad as the other guy," a voice says behind him._

_He doesn't bother looking up as the newcomer settles next to him. She flicks her coat away in an absent gesture. "You keep on staring at them any longer, and I'm going to start worrying," Death says, tapping her knee with one perfectly manicured finger. "I thought the whole point of this thing was no more interference."_

_"This isn't interfering," Jack says, confident in his own analysis of events. "This is just observation."_

_Death hums, slightly amused. She always finds it funny when he tries to slide around the technicalities of his new position. There are_ rules _in place, she's quick to remind him. That was a non-negotiable part of how he got this job in the first place, was by agreeing to abide by the rules. Fortunately, Death has a sense of humor more often than not, and is willing to overlook some of his youthful transgressions._

_Sending Castiel to the alternate world was a risk, but it was a necessary one. After Chuck was locked away, after the world settled and breathed...Castiel was lost. For the first time in his existence, he was truly alone in the world; his touchstones were obliterated. And Jack...well, everyone had made sacrifices to win, and Jack's had been his own removal. To be a part of the world and always apart from it, while he dipped his fingers in dimensions that angels had never dared dream of...It had been an act of mercy to grant Castiel's request._

_Not that Jack doesn't miss him every waking moment, with a fierceness that burns. Not that Jack doesn't wish sometimes, that he could go down and join them, Cas and Sam and Dean, just for a moment. Just to recapture a shred of what he lost._

_But...Rules. Death's help does not come without strings attached, and after Chuck's meddling, there is only so much that she will tolerate._

_"I just like to make sure that they're doing all right," Jack says. "That they're happy. They've earned it."_

_Death rolls her eyes. On the subject of Castiel and the Winchesters, she can be surprisingly close-minded. "You pulled a fast one, giving the angel his wings back and opening a door," she reminds him. "Could have shattered that entire world."_

_Jack ducks his head to hide his grin. "You know as well as I do that there was never an Apocalypse intended for that world. Because someone came along to stop it."_

_Death rolls her eyes, disliking being upstaged by a mere child. "Self-fulfilling prophecies are indulgent. You're lucky that he took out his grace before he messed anything else up."_

_Jack dares to grin at Death. After all that they've been through, she allows him these small privileges. "Just enjoy the view," he invites, stretching his hand wide across the expanse where dozens of worlds flicker through existence._

_ In every world, in every universe, a Sam, Dean, and Castiel meet. Sometimes it ends happy, sometimes not. Sometimes it's over before it even began, sometimes they spend lifetimes together. But they always meet. Always change each other, just a little bit. _

_ Always love. _

_ Jack looks back at his favorite world, at the world that he helped create, if only a little. He watches Dean and Cas dance at Sam's engagement party, hands clasped tight together. Cas leans his head on Dean's shoulder, while Dean noses at Cas' temple. In a few years, Dean will ask Cas to marry him. Cas will bluster about the meaninglessness of human rituals, just long enough to make Dean angry, before he'll accept. A few years after that, Cas will ask Dean about children. Dean will freeze, terrified that he's not able to raise a child, before he comes to Cas, late one night, and says "yes please, let's start a family." Years after that, John Winchester will die. Bobby Singer will die, then Mary Winchester, then Ellen Harvelle. They will be natural deaths and peaceful. Dean and Cas will mourn and their children will grieve, but they will move on. _

_ Dean and Cas will grow old together. They will weather every difficulty together. They'll watch Sam and Jess have children, watch their children play. They'll watch their friends fall in love. They'll watch their children leave the house and eventually start new families. And one day, many, many years from now, Castiel will die. Dean will grieve over him, an old man mourning the love of his life. A few months later, he too will pass, and his children and grandchildren will bury him next to Castiel. Sam will mourn. Sam and Jess will live a few years longer before they too, pass away. _

_ And then. _

_ Then, they will all come to Heaven, having lived out their years on Earth. They'll find that their heavens butt up against each others, find each other again. They will laugh and love for all eternity. _

_ Jack hides a grin against his knees. _

_ Then he will get to see Cas again, feel the warmth of Cas' embrace. Then he'll get to meet Sam and Dean again, learn how to fit into their family once more. They'll all be together again, this time the way that it should have been. _

_ Death knows. Of course she does. Time unravels differently for her, and she sees all realities unwinding simultaneously. She sees his hopes and dreams. And she smiles. "Give it time," she says, twisting her ring on her finger. "They've earned theirs." _

_ Jack nods and turns back to watch just in time to see the song end. The music stops, but Dean and Cas stay together, hearts beating so closely together, it's almost as if they're tuned to the same frequency. _

_ The music stops, but they stay moving. _

_ ~*~*~*~*~*~* _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and your encouragement and kindness! 
> 
> As always, if you want to yell at me on tumblr, you can find me [ here](https://dothwrites.tumblr.com/). I'm sarcastic and weird, but also a little weird. 
> 
> Catch you next time. 
> 
> <3 doth


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